Teaming Up Against Child Porn

An internet-based child porn ring with customers all over the world has been smashed as a result of a probe by law enforcement officers in Moscow and the United States.

Authorities say 15 search warrants were executed in various locations around the United States, where four people were arrested, and five other suspects were arrested in Russia, where one, a cameraman arrested February 27, committed suicide.

U.S. customs officials have said that they believe Russia is the world's leading exporter of child porn, because its laws on that kind of activity are relatively lenient.

But they also say the majority of the customers of the porn operation, called Blue Orchid, the name of its Web site, were in the U.S.

The Moscow-based Web site, shut down by authorities in January, was allegedly used to sell child porn videos which customers paid for by wire and had shipped by package services or the postal service.

Russian police nabbed the alleged operators of the Web site, Vsevolod Solntsev-Elbe and Sergey Garbko, last December and seized 400 videotapes, video duplication equipment, and sales and shipping records.

Victor Razumov and Aleksi Tormazov, who are accused of appearing in some of the videos, were arrested in March.

Marshall Heeger, a U.S. customs agent based in Moscow, praised the work of his Russian colleagues in the joint investigation, which began last May, when Moscow police asked the U.S. Customs Service for help.

"These guys are policemen," says Heeger. "This doesn't have anything to do with politics or diplomacy. This is just policemen working together to put people who break the law in jail."

The U.S. Customs Service expects to see more teamwork of this kind as it continues its campaign against child pornography, which has become a bigger problem due to the ease of distribution created by the growing popularity of the Internet.

"The United States Customs Service is working aggressively with law enforcement officials both here and abroad in making a worldwide assault on the producers, distributors and purchasers," says acting U.S. Customs Commissioner Charles Winwood. "The global nature of the Internet demands a global response by law enforcement to protect innocent children, regardless of their nationalities."

Authorities are revealing the name of just one of the four American suspects: Glenn Martikean of Portage, Ind., who was arrested on January 31 and indicted last Friday on charges of importing child pornography and interstate and foreign travel to engage in sexual activity with minors.

Police in Moscow and the U.S. cooperated so closely on the investigation of Martikean that U.S. authorities, informed that he was in Moscow, chose that time to search his home in Indiana.

The affidavit for Martikean's arrest says the search turned up a box labeled "Glenn's stuff" filled with "approximately 280 printed-out images" of boys about 8 to 12 years old "engaing in sexual activity."

Heeger, the customs agent who worked undercover on the Martikean investigation, says he met Martikean while both were in Moscow and won his confidence, convincing him that he was a fellow pedophile.

Heeger even ended up flying back to the United States with Martikean and says in recorded conversations, Martikean told him that he'd gone to Moscow to have sex with boys and had had sex with about 30 children on previous occasions.

When they reached Chicago, they got into what Martikean thought was a taxi but what was in reality, a police car in which he was soon arrested.

"I think (pedophiles) need to understand that we're going to continue to work together," says Heeger. "I don't care whether they're from America or Russia or from any other country. Wherever they go, we — law enforcement — are going to track you down and we're going to get you."

Leads from the Blue Orchid investigation have led to what the Customs Service calls "enforcement actions" in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, and other leads are still being checked out in a number of other unspecified European nations.

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