[indistinct chatter]
[banging on door]
Police! Search warrant!
[George W. Bush] Come and please be seated.
Welcome and good afternoon.
In a few moments, I will sign
the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.
When a child's life or innocence is taken, it's a terrible loss.
It's an act of unforgivable cruelty.
Having someone harm your child is one of the worst nightmares a parent can face.
Protecting our children is our solemn responsibility,
so we must do.
The bill I sign today will strengthen federal laws
to protect our children from sexual and other violent crimes.
It will help prevent child pornography.
We're sending a clear message across the country.
Those who prey on our children
will be caught, prosecuted and punished
to the fullest extent of the law.
[Charles Subke] There is a lot more
than what the public knows.
[Eli Raknes speaking Norwegian]
[Bent Arild Raknes speaking Norwegian]
[Jan Kare Aaberg speaking Norwegian]
[Brian Bone in English] Throughout my career, I've been able to see people,
all walks of life,
teachers, youth coaches.
There are all kinds of different individuals that we're dealing with.
And thinking about the trust
that the public gives to us
as law enforcement officers.
[speaking Norwegian]
[Bone in English] To see that type of trust get broken,
it's a very hard thing to deal with.
I very much hand it to that victim to be able to step up,
to want to try and find help.
You don't get to choose who investigates that case.
I would want someone like me
with that desire to be able to solve the case.
[instructor] Remember, for a siege, we're going to take up our positions.
"Four" and "M".
And I'm going to start firing suppressive fire.
- Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! - [man] Move it! Move it!
[Bone] I'm Brian Bone.
I'm a postal inspector with the United States Postal Inspection Service.
We're a federal law enforcement agency within the US.
See that? Yeah, so lean-- Lean out...
[indistinct conversation]
All right. This is my office.
Whenever in talking about search warrants and going into a house,
it's a very dangerous situation.
It's a situation that has a lot of unexpected
and unanticipated things that can happen.
When you know that the victim is living with the offender,
I think a lot of investigators look at it as a little higher stakes.
They have them prepared for when the police come through the door.
They have them prepared to know
what to say, how to answer questions, what not to say.
[loud banging]
- [loud banging] - I've seen it several time.
The first time that you have any type of contact with a child victim,
you actually see a literal look of relief.
They don't say anything,
but you could just see that
somebody, finally, was getting them
out of the situation.
[police] We have open room left. Stairs. Open room left.
I got enough room.
[Adrienne Isom] The "Lost Boy" enterprise didn't start in America.
The investigation began in Norway.
And from Norway, it actually traveled to other countries
before it came to the United States.
[B. Raknes speaking Norwegian]
[in English] And one of the men that he was communicating with
was an individual who communicated using the name "Calitoons".
[Svein Erik Krogvold speaking Norwegian]
[In English] "Calitoons" and a friend of his wanted to travel
in order to molest young boys.
And the Italian gave him advice about where to go,
where he could easily find boys.
They talked about price,
how much he should pay,
whether he would get caught...
[in Norwegian]
[B. Raknes speaking Norwegian]
- Do you need a little color? - I... No, you do what you need to do.
Mmm-hmm.
- Tomorrow, I will be in jeans and a ponytail. - [chuckles]
When the case first came,
I don't remember thinking that it was really going to be as intensive
as it ended up being.
And what really surprised me about this case,
is how, um, small things can lead to much larger things.
One search warrant,
one interview,
can lead to a network of individuals
who are all exploiting children.
It turned out that "Calitoons" was an individual
named "Harout Sarafian",
who lived in Los Angeles area.
Taking on this case, I will say
that when the lead first came in,
I had very little idea about the hard work that was to come.
Many hours.
[Catherine Connell] The agent Adrienne reached out to me
and we had worked a couple cases prior to this together.
And so when she reached out to say,
"Hey, here's what's developing,"
I just remember thinking "Wow,
"international connections, US.
"There's going to be a lot involved in this,"
is what I thought,
"and a lot of victims to interview."
So just trying to figure out how I was going to manage that.
[Bone] The lead came through to the safe team
from DOJ and ultimately Eurojust,
from the other agencies that were involved.
One of the aspects of the case
is exactly understanding or knowing
where Harry Sarafian--
where he actually kind of fits in the puzzle pieces.
Like, one of these tools that the FBI has
is a robust ability to conduct surveillance.
So... So they followed him around,
to be able to see who he interacted with.
We actually knew some of,
and had pictures of some of, his associates.
[Isom] He worked a fairly average job,
living in the North Hollywood area of Los Angeles
and maintained a close relationship with his parents,
who lived right next door.
[Krogvold speaking Norwegian]
[R. Raknes speaking Norwegian]
[Isom in English] There certainly were a lot of personalities involved.
I like to think of us as a motley bunch of people
who came together with a lot of strengths
and also weaknesses,
but we really supported one another.
You know, at the time... This was so many years ago.
But at the time, it was on of the largest cases.
But I think that we made a dent.
It is exciting how we can
bring the world together in that sort of way
- to prevent crime. - Absolutely.
- Everyone who was involved in this case. - Yes. Yes.
- All together. - All together.
Even if we'd only saved one child,
through this investigation,
it was still worthwhile.
All of the effort was still worthwhile.
- It's been great seeing you. - It is. It is.
[Isom] Where we had a gap in one area
we would find someone on the team
that was able to fill that gap.
Because the bottom line was,
"We're not going to let the offenders win."
[B. Raknes speaking Norwegian]
[in English] The team was the A-team of law enforcement.
If I don't have a known threat I am shooting at,
or I don't have a bad guy who's shooting at me,
I'm still accountable for every round that comes down range.
[Bone] Because it was multi-jurisdictional, multi-agency,
we had the FBI, we had the Inspection Service,
we had Los Angeles PD,
LA Sheriff's Office, California Highway Patrol,
we had all these different agencies.
It just requires a lot of organization and a lot of communication.
Like a brilliant, orchestrated performance.
Showed up, in tune,
and accomplished what they needed to do.
[speaking Norwegian]
[Bridbord in English] Because of the sophistication of the offenders,
their technology prowess and their understanding of technology,
the agents investigating the case understood there would be challenges.
Very highly encrypted computers were something we'd heard about...
but we hadn't really run into it so much at the time.
[Schjerven speaking Norwegian]
[Bone in English] What was important with Sarafian,
to make sure that he was able to come out of the house, was that...
One, we need to make sure that he was online.
With a lot of the intelligence that we'd been given,
we had a time frame within the morning
when he usually was logged on.
But in this case, there was an operational risk of losing evidence.
[Bone] We knew that this was not going to be a typical search warrant,
where you just knock on the door,
they don't answer, you hit it with a ram and go in.
[speaking Norwegian]
[In English] So we had to come up with a game plan.
We needed to lure him out of the house,
while the computer was on, while he was doing something.
[speaking Norwegian]
[Bone in English] As we got closer,
I'd say probably within several days
from the anticipated search warrant,
is when you start coming up with ideas, as a group.
[speaking Norwegian]
[Bone in English] Okay, well, he has a car,
his car is parked in front.
Based upon surveillance, we knew that.
We could get a tow truck up to the car
and see if we could try and lure him out.
To think about it, like when you're going through this...
Okay, he has to be online, he has to be awake.
He has to look out and see the tow truck with the yellow lights
and hear the beeping and everything.
You know, you go, "I hope it works"
[B. Raknes speaking Norwegian]
[Bone in English] It's interesting, 'cause a lot of times you remember
the extremely dirty or the extremely exotic or weird places.
It was your typical house.
I mean, it could look like your friend's house.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[B. Raknes speaking Norwegian]
[beeping]
[in English] He should be able to hear that beeping.
"Beep, beep, beep."
[speaking Norwegian]
[Bone in English] And if you see a tow truck in your driveway,
the hope would be that you're going to run out and go,
"Hey, what are you guys doing?"
Exactly as anticipated, he ran right out and...
[speaking Norwegian]
[in English] Not just an agent at the front door,
you have the back door, you have the perimeter.
[B. Raknes speaking Norwegian]
[police] Police! Search warrant!
[Bone in English] I remember walking in with the forensic examiner,
and luckily enough the computer was on
and it was able to get searched.
The offender was moved away from the crime scene,
so me and my team could preserve the evidence and begin that triage.
[Bone] In his mind, his preparation was
Yeah, the police might come to my door,
"but they're never going to get anything."
[B. Raknes speaking Norwegian]
[Bone in English] I think we could all agree
that we were going to be stuck,
and that he was not going to be cooperative.
[speaking Norwegian]
[in English] What was actually the interesting part, was Tracy.
With him coming to the residence to see what was going on.
We knew that they had a friendship.
That friendship led him to go to Harry's house and actually come in.
Since the team had seen Tracy in pictures,
some of the other agents knew who he was,
and actually let him into the household,
so that we could talk with him.
Mr. Tracy left Mr. Sarafians home that day and drove to a library.
If one is tipped off, they can destroy data.
[Blanch] If you are getting online and warning other people
that they might now be under investigation,
that is obstruction of justice.
[B. Raknes speaking Norwegian]
And Mr. Tracy's response was,
"No one told me that."
Ando we had the opportunity to interview him.
We discovered that Mr. Sarafian and Mr. Tracy
were members of the "Lost Boy" child exploitation message board.
Initially, we didn't even know it existed.
[B. Raknes speaking Norwegian]
[in English] A message board was dedicated to sharing child pornography,
and the exploitation of young boys.
[Bone] He began to explain what he and Harry and others were involved in.
I want to say it was somewhere between 8-10 hours of talking to him, off and on,
where he finally consented and gave us access to the "Lost Boy" board.
Once we were able to get the cooperation of Tracy
and be able to use his credentials to get into the board,
we were able to see very clearly the extent of what they were involved in.
[Bridbord] There was so much data that we collected,
we actually didn't have enough storage space.
Because we were collecting over the course of two days,
we needed to get more hard drives.
The "Lost Boy" message board...
The members in that board were a bit of an eclectic bunch.
We had a peace corps worker.
We had an anesthesiologist who worked with children.
- A lawyer. - Doctors.
All who had lots of opportunities in life,
and yet they chose to do this, at least in their spare time.
We had multiple sex offenders who had prior convictions.
- College professors. - Computer experts.
We had someone who built theatre sets.
And even students.
Yeah, and they met up in person
and molested a six-year-old together,
because of this message board.
[Isom] What was in common is that they were all men
who had a sexual interest in young boys.
[Bridbord] We not only identified
the evidence of production and additional victims.
We found that, but more evidence, in fact.
Some of the material on his computer
was actually filmed in his home,
um, which was really important to us,
because that meant that there were victims nearby.
[Bridbord] We saw that we were physically standing in the crime scene
where the victims were victimized.
That information is great for an agent
to ask the offender and use in his questioning.
Inspector Bone has a gift of communication,
and he did a tremendous job.
Unlike Sarafian, with Tracy and being able to talk to him,
we were able to get a much better response.
And once he understood what was going on,
he had that reaction where...
[sighs]
Knowing that he had probably been involved in dealing
with child exploitation material for many, many years,
and knew in his head that he had a lot of information.
We started with Sarafian.
That led us to Tracy,
that led us to Mr. Jazzo down in Orange County.
We continued until we'd identified as many as we possibly could,
so that we could indict everyone.
[crowd applauding]
First, the bill I sign today will greatly expand
the National Sex Offender Registry
by integrating the information in state sex offender registry systems
and ensuring that law enforcement
has access to the same information across the United States.
Seems to make sense, doesn't it?
[Andre Birotte Jr] Today, we're here to discuss
a major international investigation into a group of men
who gathered on the internet to share child pornography,
and, as one participant called it, "their field of interest".
When we seized the message board,
we were able to get a search warrant
for the entire message board.
[speaking Norwegian]
[phone ringing]
[Subke in English] I received a phone call from the FBI.
Last I had heard, there was over 200-plus kids that had been identified.
We got information that spun off to here in Franklin County.
This is the area in Miramiguoa where we located Jeffrey Greenwell's residence.
Who was using the name of "Muddyfeet".
Once we had done our interviewing
and started identifying victims and suspects,
that spun off to different parts of Utah, Arkansas and the North-East part.
And I imagine from those,
as in Utah and Arkansas and North-East,
there were probably spin-offs from those.
[Isom] That resulted in a number of arrests
and saving hundreds of children.
[B. Raknes speaking Norwegian]
[Birotte in English] The investigation by officials here in the United States
working in conjunction with their law enforcement counterparts around the globe,
shut down an international child pornography ring
and will hopefully bring some justice to numerous victims.
[Krogvold speaking Norwegian]
[B. Raknes speaking Norwegian]
They were taking the time to put down what they had learned.
And how they've sexually abused children,
to help others do the same thing.
These people weren't just posting for a bunch of other individuals
who were sexually attracted to children.
No, these individuals were friends.
[Blanch] This one message board
was the best example I've ever seen
of how these kinds of online communities
encourage each other to actually go out and molest children.
[Bush] This law makes an important step forward in this country's efforts
to protect those who can't protect themselves.
Thank you for coming to witness this.
It's now my high honor to sign the Adam Walsh Child Protection Safety Act of 2006.
We hadn't had an organizational offense
related to crimes against children before.
But this was a new crime that specifically allowed us
to charge people who were coming together as an organization
to commit crimes against children.
And the penalties were significantly higher
than penalties you would get otherwise.
The offenders ended up pleading guilty
because of the extent of the evidence that was uncovered.
[spokesperson] Fifteen of whom were US nationals.
Other members of the network
were located in countries around the world,
including Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France,
Germany, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom...
[B. Raknes speaking Norwegian]
[male newscaster speaking Norwegian]
[male newscaster 2 speaking Norwegian]
[male newscaster 3 speaking Norwegian]
[Martin Korssnes speaking Norwegian]
[male reporter speaking Norwegian]
[B. Raknes speaking Norwegian]
[male newscaster 4 speaking Norwegian]
[male newscaster 5 speaking Norwegian]
[Andrei speaking Norwegian]
[Cristian speaking Norwegian]
[B. Raknes speaking Norwegian]
[door shuts]
[in English] Hello.
[phone vibrates]
[speaking Norwegian]
[in English] The aftermath of these cases is often ongoing. Right?
One piece of evidence or one piece of information
leads to the next investigation.
I'd be safe in saying that when we got "Muddyfeet",
I knew that it was not the end of this investigation.
I know there were other victims.
We call it "vicious circle".
Because some of these pedophiles
were molested when they were kids,
so it just keeps going around.
[Blanch] Some of their stories are very sad.
But ultimately, regardless of what has happened to you,
you cannot inflict that trauma on a child.
You just can't.
[Warren] As a community of the world,
I think, a population of the world,
we all are offended by harm to children.
It's just a part of our DNA.
[Svang speaking Norwegian]
[Bone in English] When they're getting into these groups,
it's because they're not able to find that in the real world.
They found that kinship
and were able to
and were able to go across different age groups that were part of this,
and find that commonality
to want to meet up with boys and how to do that.
[Svang speaking Norwegian]
[B. Raknes speaking Norwegian]
[Isom in English] We need to listen to those
who are making these disclosures, we need to act on them.
What could be behind the curtain
is exactly what we discovered in "Lost Boy".
We had one individual in Norway,
thousands and thousands of miles away from Los Angeles, California,
who shared information that literally impacted the world.
In terms of the number of offenders that were identified,
the number of children who were saved.
[male newscaster speaking Norwegian]
[B. Raknes speaking Norwegian]
[male newscaster 2 speaking Norwegian]
[exclaims]
[In English] The important statistic for me
is the number of children that were rescued in this case.
The fact that they would have still been at risk and abused
if we hadn't moved forward.
[speaking Norwegian]
[Bone in English] A lot of times, I think people just have this idea
that you're gonna be able to pick that individual out of the crowd.
You will look at their face and say "That person is a monster."
Surprisingly enough, a lot of times, you don't recognize it,
and you know, they're amongst us.
[Svang speaking Norwegian]
[B. Raknes speaking Norwegian]