337 Arrested in 38 Countries After Bitcoin Tracing Took Down the Welcome to Video Child-Abuse Marketplace

After British police finished with Richard Huckle, they kept pulling on the same dark-web thread. The National Crime Agency told the world it had helped arrest 337 people in 38 countries tied to a hidden site called Welcome to Video.

The site ran on Tor from June 2015 until March 2018. U.S. prosecutors later called it the largest child-sexual-exploitation marketplace ever found by volume of content: more than 250,000 videos, downloaded over a million times, about 1.2 million user accounts, roughly 4,000 paying members. Access was sold in Bitcoin. That was the mistake. Blockchain tracing led Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation and Homeland Security Investigations to the administrator, then to users.

The NCA found the site while investigating geophysicist Matthew Falder, now serving 25 years after admitting 137 offenses, including encouraging the rape of children and sharing images of a newborn being abused.

In the UK, 18 investigations came off the intelligence. Seven men were convicted, with terms up to 15 years. Kyle Fox, 26, got 22 years in March 2019 for raping a five-year-old boy and abusing a three-year-old girl in material connected to the site. Authorities said at least 23 abused children were identified and rescued in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain.

NCA officers identified 23-year-old Jong Woo Son of South Korea as the operator, traveled to Seoul in March 2018, and helped HSI and the IRS seize the server. Son served 18 months in South Korea. In October 2019 a D.C. grand jury charged him with nine counts. In July 2020 a Seoul court refused to extradite him. Campaigners, including the Women’s Party of Korea, called it a gift. South Korean prosecutors later went after him again for laundering the crypto proceeds.

NCA investigations director Nikki Holland said dark-web offenders “are not as cloaked as they think they are.” The Welcome to Video takedown is still the case agencies cite when they argue that Bitcoin is a ledger, not a cloak. It sits next to the prison killing of Richard Huckle, whose own files came off a dark-web forum, and The AEGIS Alliance’s reporting on the Elysium network.

Suspected child exploitation can be reported in the US to the NCMEC CyberTipline at 1-800-843-5678, and in the UK to the NCA’s CEOP.