twenty-seven years in prison for one of the biggest hosts of pedophile images in the world

A man of American and Irish nationality has been sentenced to twenty-seven years in prison in the United States for harboring millions of pedophile images on the dark Web, the underground version of the Internet, announced Thursday (September 16th). the US Department of Justice.

Eric Marques, 36 years old, “Was one of the largest distributors of child pornography in the world”, noted Federal Prosecutor Jonathan Lenzner. He has “Hosted and helped share millions of horrific images and videos of child abuse”, he added.

Two million images unknown to investigators

From July 2008 to July 2013, he oversaw a dark web service that hosted more than 200 pedophile sites, some of which contained images of rape or sadistic acts on infants or very young children, according to the ministry. Nearly two million of these images were unknown to investigators.

Arrested in Ireland in 2013 during a large police operation that involved the American federal police, but also Europol, Eric Marques was extradited to the United States in 2019. He had pleaded guilty on February 6, 2020, thus escaping a trial. The years spent in preventive detention will be taken into account, but he will have to pay 87,000 dollars, decided Wednesday the judge Theodore Chuang, responsible for fixing the sentence.

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