Inside ICE: Volume 2, Issue 20

ICE ARRESTS CHILD PSYCHOLOGIST FOR CHILD PORN

LONG ISLAND, N.Y. — ICE agents and local police in New York have arrested a child psychologist who was employed at a pre-school on charges of possession of child pornography.

Assisted by detectives from the Suffolk County New York Police Department Computer Crimes Section, ICE agents on September 22 arrested Peter Mies, 57, as a result of a joint, ongoing investigation into the receipt and possession of child pornography via the Internet.

Mies is the latest individual to be arrested as part of a massive, ICE child pornography investigation targeting an Internet billing company based in Minsk, Belarus and its affiliated entities in the United States. To date, the investigation has resulted in the arrest of more than 1,200 people worldwide.

In January 2004, the firm was charged with money laundering, providing credit card billing for 50 child pornography Web sites worldwide and operating child pornography Web sites of its own. Three company officers were arrested in Europe and extradited to the United States. All three pleaded guilty in Newark, N.J., as have four officers of two affiliated companies in Florida and California.

ICE agents in domestic ICE offices and 52 Attaché offices worldwide then turned their focus to those who purchased child porn subscriptions from these sites in the U.S. and abroad.

As a result of the operation, called Falcon, ICE has arrested more than 237 persons in the United States, and foreign law enforcement, acting on ICE leads, have arrested more than 1,000 in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Japan, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Some of the subscribers to the child pornography sites who have been arrested to date include an elementary teacher,priests, school principals, school coaches, school janitors, camp counselors, campus ministers, pediatricians, circus clowns, Boy Scout leaders, police officers, firefighters, and many others with direct access to children. Some of these individuals were also found to have been involved in the production and distribution of child pornography.

This investigation is believed to be the largest Internet child pornography investigation to date, and the first time the U.S. government has targeted the financial side of Internet child pornography.

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