A years-long investigation into an online “big box store” for child pornography has led to the arrest of five people associated with the Toronto-based web hosting company where the site stored its “horrific” content, Ontario Provincial Police say.
The investigation, dubbed Project Greenwell, began in October, 2012 after Toronto police received numerous tips alerting them to the existence of a child pornography website that could be traced back to the Toronto-based web hosting company YesUp Media.
OPP say that members of the TPS executed a search warrant at the business on Gordon Baker Road in North York in search of approximately 800 child sex abuse files but soon realized that they had stumbled upon a much larger operation.
A total of 32 servers that were filled with approximately 1,000 terabytes of data were ultimately seized and a larger, multi-jurisdictional investigation was commenced.
At a news conference on Thursday, OPP Det. Insp. David MacDonald said that investigators have since determined that a massive child pornography website with 60,000 registered users in at least 116 different countries was hosted at the location.
That website, he said, was subsequently traced back to a man in Vietnam who remains outstanding.
Police believe that man never actually stepped foot in Canada and arranged for the child sexual abuse material to be hosted by the company “remotely.”
The charges announced by police on Thursday relate to a separate investigation that began in 2014 and targeted the owners of the business that hosted the content for the website.
MacDonald said that it is the belief of investigators that all of the individuals charged were aware of the nature of the content that was being hosted on their servers and chose to do nothing.
https://governmentslaves.news/2019/06/20/owners-of-toronto-web-hosting-company-charged-in-massive-child-pornography-bust/