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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Authorities have identified 163 Utah residents who used a credit-card service to gain access to a child-pornography Web site.
They are along 23,000 people who allegedly made use of Site-Key, a California company that provided credit card services for several illegal sites.
The Utah Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force is using tracking down the Utah customers, confiscating their computers and looking for proof that they actually downloaded child porn.
So far 15 have been arrested and six convicted.
Another 55 residents may be arrested depending on what a forensic review of their computers shows, said ICAC Director Ken Hansen.
In April 2001, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received a tip about a Dallas Web site using Site-Key, and investigators later conducted a raid. Since then 700 people in the United States have been arrested in what is now dubbed "Operation Site-Key."
The suspects nationwide include a New Jersey state superior court judge, who regularly presided over child abuse cases, and a Catholic priest based in the Northeast.
An Ohio police officer's wife got the investigation rolling when she told authorities about a Web site that appeared after she typed in the words "sweet hot spicy" on an Internet search engine. The woman was searching for a recipe when the Web site's child pornographic images popped up.
(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
