A major Ontario investigation resulted in the arrest of five individuals in the Toronto area who are accused of storing and selling millions of pornographic photographs and videos of children in more than 100 countries. This is Canada's largest net strike in the international child pornography world by the scale of the material distributed and the number of suspects arrested around the world.
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) claims that the five individuals were working for a legitimate Internet company that provides computer data storage services.
Two of the individuals were the directors of YesUpMedia and the other three were employees. Unbeknownst to their colleagues, they allowed the storage and sale of thousands of pornographic materials in order to make profits through a website in Vietnam.
The accused who were released on bail will appear on 1 st August in Superior Court in Toronto. They are: Zhen He, 40, Zhen Yu Zeng, 42, and Chin Choi Kok, 52, all of Richmond Hill, and Sui Hua Ye, 47, Aurora, and Wen Li, 31. years old, from Toronto.
They are charged with possession and distribution of child pornography and breach of their duty as Internet service providers to report to the police the nature of the products they sold domestically and internationally.
The OPP has also issued an international arrest warrant against a sixth individual who is believed to be in Vietnam. Binh Nguyen is said to be the administrator of the pornographic website that allegedly participated in the remote installation of the YesUpMedia servers in Ontario.
The Ontario authorities argue that the Vietnamese 35 years received thousands of photos and videos illegal worldwide and he stored them in Ontario ( editor's note , Canada has no extradition treaty with Vietnam).
The map where thousands of users could download illegal images stored in Ontario (in red).
Years of investigation
It is a privileged piece of information that the Toronto Police obtained that enabled the OPP, in 2012, to launch Operation Greewell with the cooperation of the RCMP, Interpol and the US Department of Homeland Security. Some employees of the company YesUpMedia, which still exists, were unaware at the time that it stored illegal material.
Ontario authorities say they found 32 powerful computer servers at the company's address containing 396,000 photo and video files that were accessible by users in 116 countries.
In total, pornographic photos and videos have been downloaded in six months more than 19 million times by pedophiles. The OPP speaks of images of babies, children and adolescents of both sexes who were photographed or filmed alone or in the company of adults, with or without face.
Thousands of children involved
OPP Detective Inspector David MacDonald says that thousands of children around the world have been used to produce these images and have been victimized and re-victimized every time their images were uploaded around the world. . Some children have been rescued according to the authorities.
The YesUpMedia company had 60,000 users and nearly 20,000 of them subscribed to a Premium subscription in order to download the files more quickly. The amount of profits allegedly collected by the alleged network was not disclosed.
The Vietnamese website was dismantled six months after its discovery, but the complex police operation continued for years to understand the extent of pornographic sales worldwide.
Police estimate that Operation Greewell has identified and arrested 11,910 individuals worldwide, including 330 in Canada. In the country, some individuals have since been sentenced after their trial. In other cases, legal proceedings are still pending before the courts.