GoKawiilAn international law enforcement action called Operation Alice has shut down over 373,000 dark web sites that offered fake CSAM packages.
The investigation, led by Germany and supported by Europol, began in mid-2021 and focused on a platform called “Alice with Violence CP,” operated by a 35-year-old suspect based in China.
These sites advertised child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and cybercrime-as-a-service offerings, including stolen credit card data and access to compromised systems.
Seizure banner on one of the scam sites
Source: Europol
According to Europol, the sites used showed previews of claimed CSAM “packages” to trick users into entering their email addresses and paying between EUR 17 and EUR 250 in Bitcoin, receiving nothing in return.
“Each package had an estimated cost of between EUR 17 and EUR 215, and promised data volumes ranging from a few gigabytes to several terabytes of CSAM,” explains Europol.
“However, these were purely fraudulent sites where CSAM was advertised and previewed but never delivered.”
The fraudulent CSAM platform fooled around 10,000 users into paying roughly $400,000 to the operator of the sites. Of those, the authorities have identified 440 users in 23 countries, and are currently investigating 100 of them.
Although these people never received the illegal material, they still tried to purchase CSAM, financially supporting child abuse and demonstrating criminal intent. Even attempting to buy such material is prosecuted in many jurisdictions.
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