Pete Manning (3:19)

There's no such thing as a typical user. As many times as we like to think that we've put together a piece of a profile for somebody that we're looking at, whether it's a producer, somebody who actually creates the material, or a collector, someone who just takes in but doesn't actually abuse children themselves. Give it days or weeks and we break that profile in pieces again. This type of crime really spans international borders. It spans religions, it's races. There's no way to pin down a specific type of person that does this. It really is pretty broad.

Sam Paranti (4:03)

And because there's no obvious demographic, there is no shortcut to this work. There are no obvious places to look for child abusers on the dark web and no simple disguise for an undercover officer to use.

Pete Manning (4:18)

Some of the people that we've investigated and arrested in the past decade have spanned from, you know, early 20 something, tech savvy, gainfully employed individuals that you'd see them as productive members of society. From the outside. On the other hand, you can find the recluse in their house. You know, the person is living in a basement on their computer all day, all night. 50 years old. So you could have people that are in high paying professional jobs to people that are unemployed.

Sam Paranti (5:02)

It could be anyone, anywhere. And so Greg's only option is to go undercover on the dark web and spend a lot of time there. He needs to watch and wait for the abusers to give themselves away. This is world of secrets, season 11, the darkest web, a BBC world service investigation. I'm Sam Paranti, a documentary maker. Episode 4 Undercover.

Greg Squire (5:47)

I think in the beginning I wasn't thinking quite as long term as it ended up being. And having done like really minimal interactions with other cases online, I didn't have a vast amount of chatting experience, you know, on one on one or anything like that.

Sam Paranti (6:05)

It's 2015. Greg's life has taken a turn. He's no longer announcing his presence to criminals. Instead he's trying to convince them he's one of them. But in order to be accepted on the dark web, Greg needs to create an identity. He needs to become someone who will be useful to the people he's trying to catch.

Greg Squire (6:31)

So in trying to build this new person, you know, that I, that I thought I needed to be or would become, I was trying to factor in a balance between effectiveness and what role I could be kind of in this, in this community. And so to be part of that, not only would you have to be savvy enough to understand these long time series and these abuse videos and be able to describe them and comment on them, but you also had to learn this, this collection of characters like each one having a role, each one expecting you to respect that role, respect that person.

Sam Paranti (7:24)

But that's not all. They also have very specific skills and interests.

Pete Manning (7:29)

A large majority of the people that we ended up arresting had some sort of technical expertise, background in their professional or personal lives. They were involved in some sort of use or development of technology. So they had the mindset to be able to develop these processes or set up hidden services and find ways to pay for things. But some of them didn't. It's amazing at, if you have an obsession for something, how you can find the energy to learn very technical processes and things that normal people can't do. When you have an obsession for abusing children.

Greg Squire (8:23)

They had the news covered, they had technology covered, they had communication covered, they had recruitment covered. Organized right down to boys versus girls, hardcore versus softcore, guides and tutorials. Everything from, you know, what barriers are you facing to come join us down to, oh, if you're gonna have a Mac machine, you want to do this. If you have a Windows machine, you want to do this. So it was pretty amazing, their investment, not just in time, but in skill set.

Sam Paranti (9:00)

In case you're wondering why child abusers need to have the news covered, this is why.

Greg Squire (9:06)

If there was public news available worldwide about say an arrest, that person who ran that section on the site would pull the articles, they would pull down conversations that occurred about it to pretty much inform the community, you know, what's happening today. And the whole idea was safety of the community. So that had someone been arrested and then all of a sudden their screen name comes back online. That's probably a police officer or there's something wrong with that, or maybe their intent isn't good anymore. So it's all about protection of the society and growth of the society.

Sam Paranti (9:47)

But it isn't just the organization of this criminal community, the experts in tech communications and news, which Greg and the team have to wrap their heads around. It's the sheer amount of time these users spend online, the almost constant stream of new images of children they're uploading.

Greg Squire (10:09)

This was life for them. They were putting 40, 50, 60 hours a week into this community. And for a lot of them, it seemed like this was their primary thing, like this was their escape. You know, this is where they wanted to be. You could see how much was Happening

Sam Paranti (10:31)

so much that if Greg leaves the forums for even a few hours, he could miss potential clues, leads which could help shut down abusers, leads which he might never be able to access again.

Greg Squire (10:51)

You would go to sleep, you know, at 9pm and by the next morning there would be hundreds of new messages, new postings, new images of children. It was kind of shocking that in the time that you're asleep, things can almost double.

Sam Paranti (11:16)

Greg is trying to maintain a normal life, but it's becoming increasingly difficult.

Greg Squire (11:21)

That time frame, it was a majority of my identity and I think, you know, probably some error in that. When I was home and with my kids, I tried to be a dad, you know, full, full time dad, but that doesn't mean I wasn't thinking in the background or looking at my phone and trying to manage both worlds. Essentially, inevitably, you find yourself looking at your own life in your own, your surroundings and wondering if there's something you can, you hadn't thought of yet at work. So the world's really become very blended. You just, I mean, for me, like, I was just thinking about the job almost full time.

Sam Paranti (12:06)

But the problem isn't just the number of posts. New users, people choosing to seek out this material, are always joining. In 2014, there were around 20,000 of them. Within just one year, nine times as many were on the sites. And new websites are popping up all the time.

Greg Squire (12:31)

With the growth of these forums and the number of people involved, they began to really categorize and sort of divide what their interests were. So the first division would be boys and girls and then from there they just kept creating subdivisions of that to say, oh, I only want to see 6 to 12 year olds. And that works for a certain group. And the other guys were like, well, I want to see babies to 6 year olds. And then, oh, I only want to see babies. And then I want to see videos only, photographs only. I want to see spy cameras only. I want to see vintage films, I want to see literature about children. So, you know, it wasn't weird to see 20 different subsections on these sites. So the divisions of these categories and subcategories, you know, certainly drew our attention.

Sam Paranti (13:35)

Although it feels difficult to keep up. That's exactly what they need to do because more and more children are in danger.

Greg Squire (13:43)

Especially when it came down to people saying, oh, I have access to a child.

Pete Manning (14:00)

Some of these old screen names are coming back.

Sam Paranti (14:03)

It's nighttime in Boston and as usual, Pete and Greg are working late. They're in their office in the centre of town finishing off A sandwich and an ice cream cake for dinner. While scouring the dark web around them, the lights in the office have faded. Their faces illuminated by only their computer screens. They are focused on the forums because the people they're trying to catch are onto them. They know they're being watched.

Pete Manning (14:33)

The child sex abuser community adjusts to the techniques used by law enforcement.

Sam Paranti (14:40)

After details were released about the arrest of Lucy's abuser, the community regrouped.

Pete Manning (14:45)

They just realized the techniques we were using to try to identify the offenders and the victims. And so they started discussing tactics and countermeasures to our tactics. And so they started really ramping up their security measures, sanitizing images, sanitizing metadata, exif data, covering footprints.

Sam Paranti (15:10)

Pete sees chatter about the need to be even more diligent in removing any digital traces online that might identify them in the real world. And the hierarchy within the groups starts to become more pronounced.

Pete Manning (15:23)

Producers would get special treatment, and they would make special sections of the forums or membership levels that protected them from just your normal passerbys. Most of these sites you didn't need to be a producer to be able to go into. But then they started making sections of those forums or chat rooms that were producer only, or whole forums themselves that were only accessible to other producers. And you had to prove that to the community that you had access by taking very specific pictures or images, videos, and proving that you were that person.

Sam Paranti (16:02)

When Pete says producer, he means people who are actively abusing children and then uploading the images of this to the dark Web. These people see themselves the elite, able to provide what everyone in the community wants. They are some of the most dangerous people on the dark Web, doing everything they can to avoid being caught. But mistakes do happen. And when they do, Greg and Pete are ready to pounce.

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Greg Squire (18:22)

Twinkle came to our attention when a dark website opened up called Baby Heart. The name is exactly what they were

Sam Paranti (18:32)

focused on on that late night in the Boston office, Greg notices someone online. It's a new user calling himself Twinkle, but that's not his real name. Greg is online a lot, using an undercover identity. He's lurking in the background on websites and interacting with different users. Like all forums, child abuse forums on the dark web are a community, local communities. People like to feel welcome and understood. And Greg, as he's probably worked out, is a very welcoming guy.

Pete Manning (19:10)

A lot of undercover work, which Greg took the lion's share of. He is very good at getting people to trust and without having to break rules, morals, ethics, laws. Being able to be accepted by such a group is a pretty heavy task.

Sam Paranti (19:31)

A pretty heavy task is a typical Pete understatement. But if Greg has to use his natural warmth to build a rapport with child abusers in order to catch them, well, that's what he's going to do. They have just seen someone new with the handle twinkl, a user running a website dedicated to the sexual exploitation of babies and an abuser himself. Despite everything Pete and Greg have seen, this really shocks them.

Greg Squire (20:00)

That was the first time we saw a infant dedicated dark website. It wasn't like we hadn't seen the abuse before, but we just hadn't seen the scale before. So Twinkle was the self professed operator of the site, owner operator of the site, and naturally he became a person of great interest to all of us.

Sam Paranti (20:32)

This us is a small number of police officers in different parts of the world who are doing the same job as Greg and Pete. Other agents who are also entirely dedicated to catching child Abusers on the dark web.

Greg Squire (20:46)

Our team really began to focus and become dedicated to dark web activity. It really, you know, firmed up our place, I think in the global community as far as a group that would be, you know, reliable, effective, obviously hard working.

Sam Paranti (21:04)

These disparate law enforcement officers set up what they call the Global Working Group. It's not a very descriptive name for what the group actually does. Sharing intelligence in order to track down people who are committed to staying hidden from view in other areas of intelligence sharing. Some countries refuse to work with each other, perhaps wary of revealing their capability. But when it comes to child abuse, none of that matters.

Greg Squire (21:31)

We were having real collaboration amongst multiple countries and working on that. Really a 24 hour clock. That was the dark web environment. Getting together and having 24 hour coverage to make sure if something happened while the Europeans were asleep, then the Australians were able to give them that information. Or while the Aussies were asleep, we're able to give them that information.

Sam Paranti (21:59)

And so when Greg comes across Twinkle, he immediately reaches out to this global community of, of agents because Twinkle appears to have an international connection.

Pete Manning (22:13)

A key aspect that we had of Twinkle was his ability to speak Portuguese. It's a standout from many of the other admins. There were sections of Baby Hart that were Portuguese only and he would post in Portuguese. And because we had tight connections with both Portugal and Brazil, we were able to determine that it was most likely Portuguese from Portugal and not Brazilian Portuguese.

Sam Paranti (22:48)

But Twinkle's Portuguese isn't the only thing that makes him stand out.

Pete Manning (22:52)

Most admins don't claim to be producers themselves, mostly because it generates a lot of attention, the bad kind of attention that they eventually get caught. Running a site as an admin gains enough attention already and if you add a level of, you know, having direct access to children, that gets the even more scrutiny from law enforcement. It also opens up the door to all types of vulnerabilities because you're posting images of these private places that you are abusing children and you have to sanitize those images or crop those images or frame them in a way that no one can make an identification. And that's. It gets tougher and tougher within the sheer volume that you post.

Sam Paranti (23:50)

Posting is exactly what Twinkle was doing when he inadvertently showed his hand.

Pete Manning (23:56)

Literally, it was unique in that kind of had this skin color gradient to it. It's very subtle. You wouldn't notice it if you weren't really kind of looking. But the parts of the fingers were very white where the rest of the hand was darker.

Sam Paranti (24:14)

When Pete and Greg get in touch with their colleagues in Brazil and Portugal, their Brazilian counterparts tell them something else. The Brazilians had recently carried out a major arrest of a producer of child sexual abuse material who went by the name of Sassy, a deeply paranoid character, so paranoid that he collected the details of many of the other producers. Sassy had a black book filled with the real life details of many of the producers he had been interacting with on the dark web. And when the Brazilians arrested Sassy, they got a copy of this black book. So when Pete gets in touch to ask about Twinkle, they happily share the black book with their US Colleagues.

Pete Manning (25:06)

We got this information, this profile of the individual listed in this black book. You know, we had an actual name of somebody. We didn't know if there was a real name or not, but we knew it was the name of somebody who was in Portugal. Searching through those posts and those profiles came across some similar profiles with similar pictures, with edits that were very characteristic of edits that you'd find on Baby Hart.

Sam Paranti (25:43)

To try and protect himself from law enforcement to Twinkle would always use emojis to cover the faces of the children he was abusing before sharing the material on Baby Heart. It is distinctive. And this is where Pete spots something. The user in the black book, his real life name. They now have uses emojis in a similar way. But there's something else. Pete had noticed before that Twinkle had very slightly different colored skin on his hands. Part of them were very white, while the other parts were a lot darker.

Pete Manning (26:25)

We were able to identify that the individual, that profile had that same skin

Sam Paranti (26:30)

condition, a skin condition known as vitiligo, which both Twinkle and. And the Portuguese man whose real name they now have both share. Bingo. In Texas, Elise's older brother Staton, is finally beginning to find his place in the world. He's got a job or various jobs. Elisa is trying to maintain distance from her family, but it's not always easy.

Elisa (27:09)

I mean, our contact was limited. I maybe saw him three or four times a year, if even that sometimes. So there wasn't a whole lot there. I think I started to feel more pressure for those relationships and those connections because of my mom and because she was kind of more of a part of my life at that point. But I mean, I know that there are probably red flags. If I thought somebody would have seen it, it would be my mom. She lived with him.

Sam Paranti (27:40)

However, Elisa's mom is no longer the main person in her brother's life.

Elisa (27:44)

I think he was struggling with, like, personal relationships. To find someone. I want to say that they maybe met on an app, but I'm not totally positive. Whenever he met his later on wife, everybody was like, well, it's about time.

Sam Paranti (28:03)

But something still doesn't feel right to Elisa. Why this relationship and why now?

Elisa (28:09)

He wasn't having normal relationships with other people. Couldn't really figure out why. But then it's also like, I know plenty of people who are still single.

Sam Paranti (28:20)

Elyse's brother Staton and his girlfriend Daniel don't waste any time. They get engaged.

Elisa (28:27)

So at that point he was kind of following like typical timeline when you find someone, they started getting more serious. They ended up getting married.

Sam Paranti (28:39)

Then Elisa gets the news she's been dreading. Her brother's wife is pregnant and it makes Elisa feel sad.

Greg Squire (28:49)

Tick.

Sam Paranti (28:57)

That's next time on World of Secrets. We would like as many people as possible to hear this story, so please leave a rating and a review and do tell others about World of Secrets. It really does help.

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Greg Squire (29:35)

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Pete Manning (30:15)

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