International paedophile ring smashed

Ian Frost, 35, and his partner Paul Rowlands, 34, Frost’s brother Paul, 37, and 32-year-old Ian Sambridge pleaded guilty at Nottingham Crown Court on Friday to various charges of making, distributing and possessing indecent images of children.

Lincolnshire Police said that Operation Alpine had resulted in 132 children in the UK being protected, and a number of paedophiles had been removed from positions of trust, including teachers, doctors, youth workers and police officers.

The four men were running a UK-based “news service” website from a tiny hamlet called Martin Dales in rural Lincolnshire, offering more than 1,300 suspected paedophiles in 45 countries in Europe, Asia, America and Africa access to millions of child abuse images.

They used a massive array of computer equipment, including an industrial-sized server with the storage capacity of 720 iPads.

Lincolnshire Police said the server was so large that when it was switched on to be forensically analysed, the electricity consumption was so great that it dimmed the lights in the building where it was being examined.

It contained 5.5 million images and nearly 6,000 movies, and has led to 211 suspects being located and more than 178 separate premises being searched in the UK alone.

The defendants amassed a staggering £2.2m from running the subscription service, which was used by thousands of customers, including paedophiles around the globe.

Customers arrested and tried as a result of the operation include the Deputy Head of a Cumbrian NHS trust, who pleaded guilty to possessing indecent images of children, a scout leader and ex-school governor from Devon, and a school crossing patrol worker from Humberside.

To date, 38 offenders have been dealt with for the possession of indecent images of children by way of caution or court sentence, including imprisonment.