'Falsely accused paedophiles were actually victims of credit card fraud'

To sum it up, you know it's a witch hunt when:

A - in all probability - police sting child porn web site (as the web site was US based and no mention of site owners facing charges) attracts 7200 users to sign up. Problem, at least 4900 (the other 2300 plead guilty) of those accounts are fraudulent created with stolen personal information - likely the result of spam bots as the cops who set up the site probably did not require verification for registration or any other tools do deter fake accounts.

But, the cops go on a rampage to round up all 7200 people in the USA and UK. As mentioned earlier they got 2300 guilty pleas but as we all know, since there is really no jurisprudence required when the accused is labeled sex offender and the police use tactic that could be described as torture when dealing with them - they very likely procured a great many false guilty pleas from innocent men who had no idea what they were up against.

The 4900 that were not charged - at least in the UK - got police cautions (I'm not familiar with how that works as I don't think there is a similar practice in the USA or Canada) and ended up on the UK sex offender registry for 5 years anyway. How can you punish some one when they have not been found guilty of a crime? What kind of laws do you have in th UK?

Police issue a statement admitting "some fraud" but say investigation was "...not rife with fraud". I don't know where you are from, but a business who's customers are AT LEAST 68% fraudulent (likely mush higher as I am certain many of the 2300 men who plead guilty are actually innocent) is pretty rife with fraud if you ask me.

But lets really make sure everyone gets it. INNOCENT people - likely thousands of them - not found guilty, never got a day in court placed on the sex offender registry. Think they are trying to "protect the children" or fluff up the numbers to instill fear in the general populace? What possible protection can children receive when innocent people are added to the list?

Anyone still think these registries are a good idea that are there to protect people?

Over Zealous, incompetent cops either set up a sting, or bust an incredibly stupid scam artist who probably got turned in by their (I'm not going to use a gender there because I know women are just as likely to run an idiot scam like this as men are) ISP.

I know I'm reading between the lines a little, but when dealing with MSM and the witch hunter generals sometimes it's just as telling what they don't say as what they do.

The kicker to all this as if that's not bad enough - 39 of the accused men committed suicide.

No one - I mean NO MAN - is safe in the UK as long as the practice of putting people not even charged with a crime on the sex offender registry continues. It can happen to you. Plus, if you think the UK will be alone in this practice, don't count on it. It is a witch hunt, all it takes is the cry "He's a pedophile!" and you're done. And with technology, you don't even need to be involved at all, there doesn't need to be a victim, and you'll never know when they are coming or what they'll do to you when they do come for you.

This whole thing could easily have been the result of data mining programs that spam every site out there with personal information they collected trying to create fake user accounts.

Anyone still think men's rights can afford to keep ignoring this issue?

The misandry in the world knows no end it would seem.

I don't know about you, but in my book this counts as a bigger tragedy then Virginia Tech. More people dead, many thousands more persecuted, and a couple thousand convictions under dubious circumstances at best.

These men are probably, fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, friends, husbands, citizens, PEOPLE!

We all need to stand up and say this has to stop. This can't happen again. We've gone to far in search of the boogie man. End the witch hunt now!

Actually, we should've known it's a witch hunt long before an event like this happened.

I found this other story in the margin of the website:

A woman accuses her ex boyfriend of rape to justify her current boyfriend beating him up.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=454224&in_page_id=1770&ICO=NEWS&ICL=TOPART

Yikes!

I think it's called "To Catch a Predator". Every single scenario presented on the show, is a classic example of entrapment. Entrapment is illegal, why can they get away with it in this case? Sorry to change the subject.
-ax

As this was an international operation - we even had more then 100 convictions in Canada from it - it was easy to set up to achieve maximum results while accepting minimum responsibility for the absolute debacle it turned out to be.

If you listen to the BBC radio broadcast about it, they talk to both US police who were involved and UK police that were involved - each blamed the other for the failures that occurred. The reality is the US gathered this list - by whatever means. I'm still not convinced the 'landslide' web portal was not theirs to begin with. Passed it on - assuring the various international bodies "there is evidence" and so they all proceeded to find the witches and prepare them for burning at the stake. Turns out the only evidence there was was evidence of incompetence and credit card fraud. But since no one body had any kind of supervisory role, everyone passes the blame around to everyone else and in the end no one is held accountable for it all, and no one learns a God damned thing about how NOT to investigate, peruse, and treat suspects.

By the way, anyone who ever says "No one would plead guilty to a crime like that if they were truly innocent" is completely clueless or lying or both.

Operation Ore was a textbook example of how to generate terror around the world through fear by starting a fictional international witch hunt. Osama Bin Laden should be envious of the police's ability to terrorize the Western world as well as he can with much more ease.

This is one of the biggest tragedies if the 21 century so far. These men will never be the same. Their families have been tortured. Some of them are dead. And it was all done under false pretenses.

When the police are involved, you don't even need evidence, a victim, or any involvement whatsoever in anything illegal of the person being arrested for a false accusations to occur.

..data of more than 20 million credit card users was handed to the police by the CC companies during this operation.

On a sidenote, I don't know how long you people have been using the net, but those paedo "paysites" were absolutely non-existant when the politicians started talking about them. I was like 15 years old myself then (early 90s, before the WWW appeared) and it wasn't even illegal. I found people swapping stuff from 70s "nudist magazines", but certainly nothing commercial, ever. This appeared _after_ the public talk began.
My guess is that criminal groups got the impression that others were already making money, and decided to get into business themselves.