The investigators from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), the Central Office for Internet and Computer Crime (Cybercrime) and the Central Office for Combating Internet Crime (ZIT) under the direction of the General Public Prosecutor's Office in Frankfurt am Main succeeded together to arrest the operator of pedophile platforms.
As reported by Tagesschau on the basis of research by the ARD political magazine Panorama and the research format STRG_F, the investigators of the Federal Criminal Police Office have now succeeded in naming the 21-year-old operating under the pseudonym “Elias Harper”, a fictional character from the US television series Quantico Arrest the operator and main administrator of the pedophile platforms “BoyVids 6.0” and “Forbidden Love”, two of the largest online exchanges for images of sexualized violence against children, which can be accessed via the Darknet.
-
Image 1 of 2
First arrests in November
The Federal Criminal Police Office investigated on behalf of the Central Office for Combating Internet Crime of the Attorney General's Office Frankfurt am Main and was able to arrest a total of three suspects in Germany in November and December. They should all have been active on the following platforms.
- Elysium*
- BoyVids 6.0
- Child Porn Market
- Forbidden Love
- Boystown**
*) taken offline in 2017 **) taken offline in 2021
In addition to the main administrator of the Darknet forums, a 44-year-old man from Lower Saxony, a 45-year-old from Schleswig-Holstein and another suspect in Brazil were arrested.
BoyVids 6.0 counts more than 400,000 accounts
More than 400,000 people, some with double accounts, are said to have been registered on BoyVids 6.0 alone and exchanged links to thousands of photos and videos. In cooperation with the US federal police FBI and authorities in Australia and Brazil, the German BKA investigators were finally able to identify and arrest several suspects. Another main suspect has escaped, however, as research by WDR and NDR has shown.
Sexualized violence against young women
On the other hand, “Forbidden Love” was about depictions of sexualized women Violence against girls and young women. The Darknet platform, which has been online since February of this year, recorded almost 850,000 registrations.
Copy of a platform is online again
h2>
As reported by NDR, a complete copy of “BoyVids 6.0” with around 78,000 pages appeared on December 7th, which is to be used to set up a new platform.< /p>
As the research by Panorama and STRG_F shows, the new platform should go online in the coming days and make the content that was actually switched off available again. The original forums and platforms have now been blocked by the authorities.