The FBI, which has numerous investigations involving the dark web, quickly became aware of the site, but “given the nature of how Tor hidden services work, there was not much we could do about it,” Alfin recalled. The case opened shortly after Steven Chase launched Playpen in the summer of 2014. “We were only able to pull it off with a lot of support from our international partners and field offices,” said Special Agent Dan Alfin, who investigated the case as part of the Bureau’s Violent Crimes Against Children section. And it has opened new avenues for international cooperation in efforts to prosecute child abusers around the world. It represents the Bureau’s most successful effort to date against users of Tor’s hidden service sites. The case-and the thousands of follow-up investigations it has launched-is unprecedented in its scope and reach, FBI officials said.
Chase ran the Playpen website, where members uploaded and viewed tens of thousands of postings of young victims, indexed by age, sex, and the type of sexual activity involved. Chase, 58, of Naples, Florida, created a website called Playpen in August 2014 on the Tor network, an open network on the Internet where users can communicate anonymously through “hidden service” websites-where criminal activity is not uncommon. The creator and lead administrator of what was believed to be the world’s largest child pornography website-with more than 150,000 users around the world-was sentenced this week to 30 years in prison.
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