A Victoria man was among the hundreds of people arrested in an international child pornography bust carried out by Toronto police.
A man in his 60s, whose name cannot be released due to a publication ban, was arrested after a search of his Victoria home in May 2012, said VicPD spokesman Const. Mike Russell on Friday.
Victoria police started investigating the man three months earlier after receiving information from the National Child Exploitation Co-ordination Centre and the Toronto police.
Victoria investigators recovered evidence from the man’s home that linked him to the child pornography website that was the target of the Toronto police investigation.
The man has a history of sexual offences from another jurisdiction, Russell said. He is charged with possession of child pornography.
Toronto police announced Thursday that 348 people were arrested around the world, including 50 in Ontario and 58 from other parts of Canada.
The investigations spanned more than 50 countries. School teachers, doctors, nurses, pastors and foster parents are among those facing charges in the wide-ranging operation that can be traced back to a business operating in Toronto’s west end, police said.
Insp. Joanna Beaven-Desjardins, of the Toronto police sex crimes unit, said at least 386 children have been rescued from sexual exploitation as a result of the sweep.
The investigation started in October 2010 when undercover officers contacted a Toronto man they believed was sharing child pornography online.
Police allege Brian Way, 42, had been running an “exploitation movie, production and distribution company” called Azov Films since 2005, and had made more than $4 million from the business.
Through his company, investigators said the man would allegedly contract people to create child pornography videos involving children, largely boys, between the ages of five and 12. Many of those videos were shot in Ukraine and Romania, investigators said.
Police allege the videos were then distributed from Toronto — through the mail and the Internet — to customers around the world.
Toronto authorities moved in to arrest Way in May 2011, and then, along with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, spent months recreating a customer database.
That information was shared with the RCMP and Interpol, which led to arrests of customers around the world and to the apprehension of those suspected of creating the videos.
Investigators seized 45 terabytes of information that included “hundreds of thousands of images and videos detailing horrific sexual acts against very young children, some of the worst [investigators] have ever viewed,” Beaven-Desjardins said at Thursday’s press conference.
Det. Mark McPhail is with the Victoria police’s child exploitation unit. He said he has 15 active files, which range from child luring cases to possession of child pornography.
McPhail said some investigations can include undercover surveillance to prove the suspect is the person using the computer linked to the IP address flagged on a child-porn website.
He could not say what type of surveillance was used in investigating the Victoria man.
— With a file fromThe Canadian Press
