Start of international cooperation investigation The first organization to investigate Welcome To Video was the United States
Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigations (IRS-CI), which found transactions made with
cryptocurrency on
child pornography websites, and asked the US
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) for cooperation in their work. IRS-CI investigators, in the Cyber and Forensic Services, led by executive director Jarod Koopman, found that the Welcome to Video
servers were poorly secured, finding the IP address of the server embedded within the
source code, allowing them to determine the location of the server.
Prosecution of Son Jung-woo First trial Son was arrested in March 2018 and charged in May. His charges included receiving about million (~$360,000) in
cryptocurrency from 4,000 paid members and providing them with 3,055 articles of child pornography. In addition, 156 Korean citizens were charged with
possession of child pornography (). Many of those charged were unmarried men in their 20s, including office workers and college students; others included doctors, civil servants, and school teachers. One user had a history of child sex crimes and had access to roughly 48,000 articles of child pornography. Son reportedly appointed seven lawyers through a
law firm. The first trial court found Son violated the
Act on the Protection of Children and Youth Against Sex Offenses and
Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection, etc. and sentenced him to two years in prison and three years of probation. However, the sentence was suspended.
Second trial and sentence confirmed As a result of the first trial, Son left the detention center after six months. He was represented by a
public defender during the second trial. In April 2019, in the midst of this trial, he registered his marriage and appealed to the court that he had a family to support. In May 2019, the second trial court sentenced him to one and a half years in prison, stating "Acts such as selling child pornography for a large profit for a long time can distort the perception of children sexually." The extradition warrant had been filed for international money laundering, a crime in South Korea which did not overlap with the convictions made domestically. On 6 July, the extradition request was denied. The High Court decided that Son's continued presence in South Korea would be useful in the country's continuing investigations against child exploitation.
Third trial In July 2022, Son was sentenced to 24 months in prison for concealing his financial proceeds from the Welcome to Video operation and for using some of those proceeds for online gambling.
Outcome from the international cooperation investigation According to the announcement of the KNPA and the US DOJ on 16 October 2019, investigative agencies from 38 countries made arrests based on the evidence jointly collected from Welcome to Video by the KNPA; the US HSI, IRS and
Federal Attorney's Office; the
UK National Crime Agency; and the German District Attorney's Office. At that time, the number of arrests was reported as 310 from 32 countries (per KNPA)
United States Americans convicted and sentenced for their roles in the case include: • Nicholas Stengel of
Washington, D.C., was sentenced to 15 years in prison in October 2018 for downloading 2,686 videos from the site. • Richard Gratkowski, a former
Homeland Security Investigations agent, pleaded guilty and was sentenced in May 2019 to 70 months in prison. Gratkowski appealed his conviction by claiming the investigation violated his
Fourth Amendment rights, but in 2020 the
Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the conviction in
United States v. Gratkowski. The court found that, because the blockchain is publicly available, Gratkowski had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the transaction data posted to it that the government had analyzed to find him, and that furthermore, under the
third party doctrine he had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the information that he had provided to the third party
cryptocurrency exchange he had used. • Stephen P. Langlois, an Army veteran residing in Rhode Island, was sentenced in May 2019 to 42 months in prison for downloading 114 videos from the site. Kyle Fox was sentenced to 22 years in prison for uploading a video of a 5-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl he sexually assaulted.
Hungary Gábor Kaleta, the
Hungarian ambassador to Peru, pleaded guilty after he was found to have downloaded over 19,000 images from the site. He was flown home in complete secrecy in March 2019, after the American investigators identified him; the Hungarian public learned about the case in February 2020. and "basically an acquittal". Governing party
Fidesz reacted with
Lex Kaleta, a law intended to fight pedophilia. The 2021 law was criticised by human rights groups and the European Union for lumping together pedophilia with homosexuality and transsexuality. This law restricts minors from accessing LGBTQ-related books, films and other media. It also limits sex education in schools. It also banned pride events in public space by 2025 and anyone who participate could face fines for up to €500 and organizers to face 1 year in jail. ==Aftermath==