A child pornography website is shut down and its creator is locked up.
Steven Chase, the man who created the website Playpen, was just sentenced to 30 years in prison, along with a lifetime of supervised release.
His website, which operated from a server in Lenoir, got subscribers to pay to join, and from there, they could request and share images of the specific age of child they wanted to see engaged in child porn.
Michael Fluckiger, the site administrator, has already been sentenced to 240 months behind bars.
U.S. Attorney Jill Westmoreland Rose said the investigation led to hundreds of arrests.
A tip from foreign law enforcement agents sparked the investigation.
"At least 350 U.S.-based individuals have been arrested,” Rose said. “Twenty-five of those were actually producing child pornography, the actual people filming and videotaping the acts being committed on these children."
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