Another net porn distributor jailed

A Wellington man responsible for the security of aninternational criminal network trading in child sex abuse pictures has beenjailed for four and half years in the Wellington District Court.

Daniel Jess Moore, 32, sickness beneficiary, pleaded guiltyto 10 charges of distributing and 51 of possessing objectionable material andone count of making an intimate visual recording. Crown solicitor, Tom Gilbert,told the court that in terms of the degree of organisation and scale, the casewas unprecedented in New Zealand.

 Moore was identified, along with the US man now serving an18-year sentence, in a joint operation between New Zealand authorities and theUnited States Secret Service. The pair were operating an international, organisedcriminal network trading and distributing images of child sexual abuse on the internet.

The secret Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel was used totrade many millions of child sex abuse pictures and movies exclusively betweenits members – exact number unknown but exceeding100 active members. Moore wasresponsible for the security of the channel and acted as administrator andgatekeeper. He employed high-level security, to prevent unauthorised access.

Moore was first arrested in 2008 at a Wellington address, exchangingfiles of offending material. In January 2009, while Moore awaited prosecution,police arrested him for secretly filming up a woman’s dress as she stood attraffic lights. Moore’s laptop computer was seized and DIA inspectors foundmore than 8300 pictures and movies of girls ranging from infants to 14 yearsold engaged in a range of sexual activity. He had also accessed some 16,000objectionable images from an external hard drive and had been covertly filmingwomen in the Wellington region.

A further search warrant of Moore’s address uncoveredanother computer containing child sexual abuse images, which had been storedsince the 2008 raid.