Norwegian police announced on Wednesday that 28 men across seven countries had been arrested as part of an operation targeting buyers of content depicting child sexual assault.
These men used the Monero cryptocurrency to pay for access to several dark web forums, said Kripos, the criminal investigation unit of the Norwegian police.
“We worked closely with six countries to coordinate the arrests of identified users who had paid cryptocurrency to access these forums,” police prosecutor Terje Nedrebo Michelsen said in a statement.
The operation was carried out in early June and the men, aged 22 to 54, were arrested in Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany, Kripos said.
Other arrests are expected, possibly in other countries, police said, referring to “many suspects”.
Investigators have developed a method in 2025 to trace the use of cryptocurrency in very specific cases, she adds.
In a separate statement, Europol said one of the arrested individuals “was using artificial intelligence extensively to generate illegal content,” while “some of the victims were close family members of another suspect.”
Three children were “brought to safety” following this operation, Europol added.
The operation also led to “the seizure of more than 460 items, including electronic devices, cryptocurrency wallets, narcotics and large quantities of doping substances.”
