WASHINGTON — A Wisconsin man was found guilty yesterday in the Western District of Louisiana for his participation in an international criminal network, known as Dreamboard, dedicated to the sexual abuse of children and the creation and dissemination of graphic images and videos of child sexual abuse throughout the world.
The investigation was conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the Child Exploitation Investigations Unit of ICE’s Cyber Crime Center, the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, CEOS’s High Technology Investigative Unit and 35 HSI offices in the United States and 11 HSI attaches offices in 13 countries around the world, with assistance from numerous local and international law enforcement agencies across the United States and throughout the world.
John Wyss, aka “Bones,” 55, of Monroe, Wis., was found guilty of one count of engaging in a child exploitation enterprise, one count of conspiracy to advertise child pornography and one count of conspiracy to distribute child pornography. Evidence presented at trial revealed that Wyss had been an active member of Dreamboard, an online child pornography bulletin board, since January 2008 and had made numerous postings revealing that he had produced child pornography by capturing images of minors engaging in sexually explicit activity via webcam, including one video in which adult males were engaged in sexual intercourse with prepubescent girls.
Wyss was charged in an indictment unsealed Aug. 3, 2011.The charges against Wyss are the result of Operation Delego, an ongoing investigation that was launched in December 2009 that targeted individuals around the world for their participation in Dreamboard. Dreamboard was a private, members-only, online bulletin board that was created and operated in an environment designed to avoid law enforcement detection. It promoted pedophilia and encouraged the sexual abuse of very young children.
“Wyss and the other conspirators of the nightmare called Dreamboard mistakenly believed that they could commit heinous crimes against children and hide in the shadows,” said ICE Director John Morton. “Criminals with this kind of depravity in mind should know that ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations is ever vigilant. For every tactic taken to evade law enforcement, we will adapt our strategies to find them and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.”
