Australian Federal Police have arrested 65 people including a catholic priest, a former priest and school teachers and rescued six children under a global child pornography crackdown dubbed the largest of its kind.
The Canadian-led sting saw 348 people arrested and 400 children saved from exploitation globally under the three-year investigation.
Law enforcement pounced on a website Azov Films and arrested 42 year-old operator Canadian Brian Way, providing Australian police with details gleaned from a customer order list.
The site turned over more than $4 million a year.
To date Australian police have executed 103 search warrants and laid 399 charges with more arrests expected to come.
AFP cyber crime commander Glen McEwen said today hundreds of thousands of images equating to terabytes of data were seized on devices owned by the arrested individuals.
"Every image is a crime scene and those who seek to access or deal in it are just as complicit as those who compose the materials," Commander McEwen said.
He said police "worked tirelessly" in the investigation which freed five children in Western Australia and one in the ACT who were under active exploitation.
It would take two and a half years to quantify the exploitation images seized by Canadian law enforcement, McEwen said.
