UNITED STATES
The Washington Time
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The president and the marketing director of a Belarus-based Internet billing company linked to more than 1,000 child-pornography arrests worldwide have been extradited from France to the United States to face conspiracy, money-laundering and child-pornography charges, federal authorities said yesterday.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesman Dean Boyd said Yahor Zalatarou, 26, and Alexei Buchnev, 27, both of Minsk, Belarus, were arraigned Thursday in U.S. District Court in Newark, N.J., after their arrival from France.
Mr. Boyd said Mr. Zalatarou, president of Regpay Co. Ltd., and Mr. Buchnev, the firm's marketing director, were ordered held pending trial, tentatively scheduled for March 1. ...
ICE agents have arrested 190 persons in the United States in connection with the case, he said. The agency also has provided leads to foreign law-enforcement members that have resulted in approximately 860 arrests in Australia, Denmark, Finland, France, China, Norway, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, he said.
Mr. Boyd said some of the subscribers arrested included a California seventh-grade teacher, the chief of pediatric medicine at a New York hospital, a minister at a girls school in New Jersey, a Louisiana Catholic priest and a Nevada camp counselor. Most recently, an award-winning firefighter in California was charged with 56 counts of possessing child pornography purchased from Regpay-affiliated sites, he said.