A man who operated a dark web service that hosted millions of child-sexual-abuse images was sentenced to 27 years in federal prison for conspiracy to advertise child pornography, the US Department of Justice announced today. Eric Eoin Marques, a 36-year-old dual national of the US and Ireland, was also sentenced to “a lifetime of supervised release” after his prison time is over.
Marques will get credit for time served from July 2013 to the present, a sentencing document says. He was also ordered to forfeit over $154,000.
During a 2013 bail hearing in Dublin, FBI Special Agent Brooke Donahue “agreed that he had described Marques as ‘the largest facilitator of child porn on the planet’ and added ‘that remains true to this day,'” according to an Irish Examiner article in September 2013. An Irish court record provides a slightly different wording of Donahue’s quote, describing Marques as “the largest facilitator of child pornography websites on the planet.” Today’s DOJ announcement said that “Marques was one of the largest facilitators of child pornography in the world.”
“Sadistic abuse of infants and toddlers”
From 2008 to 2013, “Marques operated a free anonymous hosting service located on the ‘dark web,'” and Marques’ service “hosted websites that allowed users to view and share images documenting the sexual abuse of children, including the abuse of prepubescent minors, violent sexual abuse, and bestiality,” the DOJ said in February 2020 after Marques pleaded guilty. An “investigation revealed that the hosting service contained over 8.5 million images of child exploitation material and [that] over 1.97 million of these images and/or videos involved victims that were not known by law enforcement.”
Marques’ “hosting service contained over 200 child exploitation websites,” including one website where “nearly 1.4 million files were uploaded and accessible by individuals who visited that hidden service,” the DOJ has said. Many of the images found by investigators “involved sadistic abuse of infants and toddlers.”
International investigation
In August 2013, the US filed a criminal complaint against Marques in US District Court for the District of Maryland. Ars covered the case in 2013, noting that Marques was “accused of running Freedom Hosting, a major hidden services provider on the Tor network that was notorious for hosting child porn sites.”
“This is an egregious case where one individual hosted and helped others to share millions of horrific images and videos of the abuse of children, including more than a million not previously known to law enforcement, and attempted to keep the abuse hidden on the dark web,” acting US Attorney Jonathan Lenzner said in today’s DOJ announcement.
A dozen countries and Europol were involved in the investigation, which went beyond Marques’ activities, the DOJ said:
Through this investigation, more than 200 child sexual exploitation websites were taken offline (along with hundreds of other sites sponsoring or facilitating criminal activity); the activities of tens of thousands of online child pornographers were disrupted; over four million images and videos of child sexual abuse were seized (including more than 100 previously unknown series of child abuse images and new images from more than 50 existing series); and dozens of offenders were identified and prosecuted throughout the world.
Marques needs permission to use Internet
Marques was jailed in Ireland starting in 2013 and was extradited to the US in March 2019. Marques pleaded guilty in February 2020 to conspiracy to advertise child pornography. The US dropped charges for conspiracy to distribute child pornography, advertising child pornography, and distribution of child pornography.
The terms of Marques’ supervised release will let him live in Ireland after he completes the prison term in the US. He will not be allowed to access the Internet “except for reasons approved in advance by the probation officer” and must allow the probation officer to install monitoring software on any computer he uses. The definition of “computer” under the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is pretty broad, so the monitoring-software condition would presumably cover smartphones and tablets in addition to PCs.
Other supervised release conditions include having no contact with minors and no possession of pornographic materials. Marques will be required to register as a sex offender, undergo sex-offender assessment and treatment, and submit to polygraph tests to ensure compliance with the various conditions.
Listing image by Getty Images | Niall Carson | PA Images
