It started when Task Force Argos had been aware of a network of pedophiles operating on a dark web called The Love Zone (TLZ). They first tracked down a member by his unusual greeting "hiyas" and the distinctive freckle on one of his finger.
When the officers scout the surface web and on social media, they found a Facebook page that matched the profile they were looking for. This has led to the arrest of Shannon McCoole. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
McCoole ran a website on the dark web that were meant for pedophiles. And on his website, one member was distinctive: he said that he had abused children and boasted how many times he had intentions to do so.
A specialized branch of Australia's Queensland Police Service responsible for the investigation of online child exploitation and abuse, arrested the person at London's Gatwick Airport. He was Richard Huckle, a person from Ashford, Kent, UK, who worked in a mobile phone factory and posed as a committed Christian.
Because of the lack of evidence, Huckle was bailed under the condition that he stayed at his parents' house.
One day, Huckle was drunk and admitted the allegations. His parents went fury and kicked him out of the house. It was Huckle's father that alerted the police.
Huckle was re-arrested, and charged with 91 counts. It was said that Huckle started his crime in 2006 for eight to nine years until he was apprehended in 2014.
His crime included rape of children, possession and distribution of child pornography, creation of child pornography, child abuse, creating a pedophile manual entitled "Paedophiles And Poverty: Child Lover Guide", digital penetration of a child under the age of 12, and raising money for his activities through a crowd-funding website.
His victims ranged from 6 months to 12 years old, both boys and girls.
On the site where he was a member, Huckle shared photos of his crimes with other members. He also boasted about his crimes to other pedophiles, posting comments as "Hit the jackpot, a three-year-old girl as loyal to me as my dog and nobody seemed to care" and "impoverished kids are definitely much easier to seduce than middle-class kids".
He also kept an electronic ledger or score card on which he used to award himself points according to how far his abuse had gone with a particular victim.
In total, prosecutors unveiled 29 victims and over 20,000 photos with many featuring Huckle participating in the abuse. But it was believed that there could be more than hundreds more victims throughout Southeast Asia like Malaysia and Cambodia where he visited frequently, and thousands more photos stored in Huckle's encrypted laptop.
Huckle initially denied all the charges and prosecutors planned on holding three separate trials because of the sheer volume of the materials to be too much for a jury to deal with. Huckle eventually pleaded guilty after accepting the weight of evidence against him.
In June 2016, Huckle was given 22 life sentences with a minimum prison term of 25 years before being eligible to apply for parole. He was regarded as one of Britain's worst pedophiles ever.