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Two Utah men are among 72 people charged in federal court for allegedly trading thousands of images depicting children being sexually abused.
David Brian Lindsay, 30, of Midvale, who used the Internet name "slipnslide" and 32-year-old Shane Michael Turner, of Roy, were busted as part of an international child pornography network that used an online bulletin board called Dreamboard to exploit children, Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday.
The men were arrested after law enforcement completed a 20-month investigation called Operation Delego, which profiled members of Dreamboard, a members-only Internet site designed to promote pedophilia, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Those who sought material on Dreamboard accessed and shared images of children ages 12 and under, including some infants, Holder said at a news conference, calling the activities a "nightmare." Some videos showed children crying in pain as the abuse took place, he said.
In order to maintain club membership, participants had to continuously upload sexual images of children. Some participants were elevated to a "Super VIP" status after creating a certain amount of material showing them molesting children, court documents state.
Members hid their behavior by using screen names and accessed the bulletin board with servers that allowed them to disguise the locations from which they were accessing the material, court documents state.
The amount of pornography traded by those involved equaled about 16,000 DVDs, Napolitano said at the news conference.
So far, out of the 72 people charged in federal court, authorities have arrested 43 people in the U.S. and nine out of the country, according to the Justice Department.
Law enforcement in 13 other countries arrested people in connection with Dreamboard, but some of those cases will be tried out of the U.S. on charges local to those countries.
Lindsay was arraigned in Utah, but has since been transferred to federal court in Louisiana, were his case will be tried. Turner, who used the Internet moniker "korneech08," also awaits trial in Louisiana. A relative of Turner, Dwight Turner, declined to comment on the case when reached at his home in Roy on Wednesday afternoon.
Many court documents in the case have been filed under seal, according to the docket at the U.S. District Court — Western District of Louisiana, leaving few personal details about the Utah defendants available through public court documents.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Carol Dain coordinated with Utah investigators as well as prosecutors in Louisiana to serve arrest warrants on the Utah defendants, said Melodie Rydalch, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Utah. Dain's expertise is prosecuting child exploitation cases as part of Project Safe Childhood, a national initiative launched by the Justice Department in May 2006, intended to crack down on predators who use the Internet to hunt for child victims.
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