A 36-year-old Irish American has been sentenced to 27 years in prison in the United States.
Eric Marques "was one of the largest distributors of child pornography in the world," noted federal prosecutor Jonathan Lenzner, quoted in a statement from the US Department of Justice.
It has "hosted and helped share millions of horrific images and videos of child abuse," he added.
From July 2008 to July 2013, he oversaw a dark web service, the underground version of the internet, which hosted more than 200 pedophile sites, some of which contained images of rape or sadistic acts on infants or children. very young children, according to the ministry.
Nearly two million of these images were unknown to investigators.
Eric Marques was arrested in Ireland in 2013 during a large police operation, involving the American federal police but also Europol, and extradited to the United States in 2019. He had pleaded guilty on February 6, 2020, thus avoiding himself a trial.
The years spent in preventive detention will be taken into account, but he will have to pay 87,000 dollars, decided Wednesday the judge Theodore Chuang, responsible for fixing the sentence.
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