By Steve Neavling
The murder of two FBI agents in February 2021 led authorities to an international pedophile ring that stretched all the way to Australia.
The FBI and Australian authorities on Monday announced 79 arrests, 65 indictments, and 43 convictions in the U.S., and 19 men were charged in Australia.
The case unraveled after the shooting deaths of FBI agents Daniel Alfin and Laura Schwartzenberger, who were killed while trying to execute a search warrant related to child sex abuse material at a home in Florida. Three other agents were wounded, and the suspect, David Lee Huber, died from a self-inflicted gunshot.
During the investigation, the FBI discovered that Huber was part of an international pedophile ring.
The FBI tipped off Australian officials about a peer-to-peer network used to share child abuse material on the dark web.
“This operation was highly complex,” the FBI’s legal attaché in Canberra, Nitiana Mann, told reporters Tuesday, CNN reports. “The complexity and anonymity of these platforms means that no agency or country can fight these threats alone.”
Members of the network are accused of using “software to anonymously share files, chat on message boards and access websites within the network,” using encryption and “other methods to avoid law enforcement detection,” police said in a statement.
