
A tip to Canadian police led to the arrest of 41 suspects involved in a child porn ring spanning 17 countries, Toronto police said at a Wednesday press conference.
A total of 19 children ranging in age from infants to teens were victimized and the bust follows a one-year investigation involving Toronto-area York Regional Police, U.S. Homeland Security, the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP.
Project Hyra also involved a case in New Brunswick where RCMP arrested a 24-year-old male who may have victimized more than 2,000 boys from Canada, the U.S., the UK, Russia and Australia.

In the Toronto area, police executed 125 search warrants and arrested the 41 suspects on 110 charges.
The tip that eventually led to the bust came from a “young person” who had uploaded images onto the Internet, police said. His identity was not revealed. A subsequent investigation led police to several unidentified persons who were exchanging child pornography in private chat rooms and through social networking.
“Investigators learned that the young person had been a victim of child exploitation and had been coerced into providing self-exploited images to the unknown people online,” York Regional Police Insp. Tim Kelly said at the press conference.
In some cases, the pornographers had gained the trust of victims.

“The abusers appear to be people that the victims trusted or online predators that coerced the victim into creating child sexual abuse materials,” Kelly said.
Investigators enlisted the aid of website owners who helped identify suspects in many countries, he said.
But police are not done with Project Hydra just yet. Kelly said the investigation “continues to grow” as more victims are identified.
Parents looking for information can visit cybertip.ca.
The arrested New Brunswick man used several social media sites to show a video of a teenage girl, who appeared to be live, to lure the boys to undress and perform sex acts, police said, ensnaring at last 2,000 victims.
“Many of them may not be aware they have been victimized,” said RCMP Insp. Peter Payne.
He said the man used various identities, including:
– Skye: Veronika.Maylae
- Vichatter: Veronika69
- Facebook: Vero May
(Anadolu Ajansi)
Leave a Reply