The leaders of an international child pornography ring were sentenced to 25 years in federal prison Tuesday.
Yahor Zatarou, 27, Minsk, Belarus, president of Regpay Co. Ltd., and Aliaksandr Boika, 30, also of Minsk, were each sentenced to 25 years in prison and were each fined $25,000 for their role in heading up the child porn enterprise, Newark’s Star Ledger reported.
Judge Dennis M. Cavanaugh of the U.S. District Court in Newark handed down the sentence after the two men pleaded guilty last November to money laundering charges and charges that they peddled child porn through their company, Regpay. The two men admitted that it processed between $2.5 million to $7 million in membership fees from subscribers around the world to access to child porn Web sites.
Zalatarou had also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport via computer, images of children engaging in sex acts. Boika also pleaded guilty to charges that he conspired to advertise child porn.
Their trial is part of an ongoing prosecution of child porn purveyors and buyers that have led to more than 1,200 arrests worldwide, prosecutors said.
Most of those arrested, including about 200 people in the U.S., were charged with purchasing child porn subscriptions through Regpay.
During his trial, Zalatarou said the scheme began in July 2002, initially through a company he started, called Trustbill. But when authorities told him the payments his company was receiving were for child pornography and that he should stop, he merely changed the company’s name to Regpay, which advertised memberships to child porn sites.
Zalatarou said he also hired Fort Lauderdale-based Connections USA Inc., which operated as iServe.com, to process credit card transactions for Regpay customers.
In May, officials at Connections USA pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge and agreed to forfeit $1.1 million and dissolve its business as part of a guilty plea to conspiracy charges in connection with the case.
Connections USA owner Arthur Levinson pleaded guilty last month money laundering charges.
