Nine people have been arrested in an international child pornography ring that operated from a Russian Web site, the US Customs Service said today.
Two Russian suspects allegedly operated a Web site called the Blue Orchid, which sold child porn videos over the Internet mostly to the United States, the Customs Service said.
The Moscow City Police Department detained one suspect in the child porn ring last December, which led the combined Moscow/US Customs group to arrest four more people in Russia and four others in the United States.
Enforcement action has also been taken in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, and is underway in several other European countries, the Customs Service said.
The films, which sold for $200-$300 per video, featured sexual abuse of young Russian boys, mostly from homeless or troubled families.