Child abuse suspects could be victims of ID fraud

Those caught up in the UK’s biggest internet child porn inquiry may have been innocent victims of credit card fraud, computer experts have said.

Operation Ore was launched in May 2002 after police received a list with the names of 7,000 people whose credit cards had been used to buy child pornography from a US website called Landslide Inc.Operation.

It led to raids at addresses around the UK, involved a number of police forces and has led to 2,300 people on the list being found guilty of offences. Another spent 2,000 spent months under investigation before charges were dropped.

However, a BBC investigation has now suggested that the investigation may be flawed. Speaking to the BBC’s Radio 4, Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University said he believed many of those investigated had been innocent victims of fraud.

"The police just didn't look for and didn't understand the evidence of wholesale card fraud," he said. "And as a result, hundreds of people, possibly in the low thousands of people, have been put through a terrible mill with threats of prosecution for child pornography."

Although Peter Sommer, a senior research fellow at the London School of Economics who investigated the Landslide site, disagreed calling these claims “unfounded”, he did admit that “some cases had been dropped because of a lack of evidence”.

"During an investigation of this size I would not be surprised if there were some small errors," he told the BBC. "There were cases of credit card fraud but after some investigation they were often found to be just that."

Police also clonfirmed that some on the list may have been fraud victims, but denied that any of them were subsequently prosecuted.

However, Jim Gamble, chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection C entre who has been involved with the ongoing Operation Ore inquiry since its inception, defended the record of the operation.

He told the BBC Radio 4 programme that more than “90 per cent of the individuals tracked by police had pleaded guilty”.

Since operation Ore began, the death toll of those involved in the investigations who have killed themselves has risen to 39.

See also:

Operation Ore fights over evidence

Child pornography on PCs creates a complex battle between prosecution and defence  14 Mar 2005

Cyber cops to tackle child abuse

Police set up website to snare paedophiles  26 Jan 2005

Two UK men arrested in paedophile swoop

International operation busts child molesting network  26 Feb 2004

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