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Shreveport, La.- United States Attorney Stephanie A. Finley announced today that
eight more defendants have been sentenced for their involvement in an international
criminal network organized to sexually exploit children in connection with their
participation in the Dreamboard Child Exploitation bulletin board. Altogether, these eight
defendants received a collective total of 169 years in prison.

On August 1, 2012, Edward Oedewaldt, 49, of Arcadia, La., was sentenced for
engaging in a child exploitation enterprise and possession of child pornography; Jerrold
Wright, 56, of Santa Anna, Calif., was sentenced for conspiracy to advertise the distribution
of child pornograpy; and David B. Lindsay, 32, of Midvale, Utah, was sentenced for
engaging in a child exploitation enterprise. On August 2, 2012, Jason Simon, 43, of
Glendale, Calif., and Stephen Fairbanks, 36, of Laverne, Calif., were sentenced for
conspiracy to advertise the distribution of child pornography; Timothy Stone, 20, of St.
Charles, Mo.; Scott Speigel, 50, of Ashburn, Va.; and Scott Lewandowski, 39, of Pueblo,
Colo.,were all sentenced for conspiracy to distribute child pornography. The sentences
were handed down by U.S. District Judge S. Maurice Hicks in federal court in Shreveport,
La. The facts surrounding the 42 defendants who have been convicted in this case are
attached.

While living in Arcadia, La., Oedewaldt was a moderator of Dreamboard, handling
technical matters including the encryption of posts so that law enforcement could not catch
participants on the board and the mentoring of members. He was a long time collector of
child pornography, having been a member of several other child pornography bulletin
boards and the administrator of at least one other child pornography bulletin board. To
date, he is the highest level member of the board to be convicted.

Forty-two out of 72 individuals have been convicted for their participation in an
international Dreamboard network. The network was 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 charges against these defendants were a result of Operation Delego, an ongoing
investigation that was launched in December of 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 to promote pedophilia and encourage
the sexual abuse of very young children in an environment designed to avoid law
enforcement detection. Operation Delego represents the largest prosecution to date in the
United States of individuals who participated in an online bulletin board conceived and
operated for the sole purpose of promoting child sexual abuse, disseminating child
pornography and evading law enforcement.

All 72 of the defendants were charged with conspiring to advertise and distribute
child pornography, and 50 of the defendants were also charged with engaging in a child
exploitation enterprise. Out of the 72 charged defendants, 55 have been arrested in the
United States and abroad. Forty-one individuals have pleaded guilty, and one defendant
was convicted after a four-day jury trial. Thirty-six of the 41 individuals who have pleaded
guilty for their roles in the conspiracy have been sentenced to prison and have received
sentences ranging between ten years and life. Thirteen of the 72 charged individuals remain
at large and are known only by their online identities. Efforts to identify and apprehend
these individuals continue.

According to court documents and evidence presented at the trial of defendant, John
Wyss, aka "Bones," Dreamboard members traded graphic images and videos of adults
molesting children 12 years of age or younger, often violently, and collectively created a
massive private library of images of child sexual abuse. The international group prized and
encouraged the creation of new images and videos of child sexual abuse - numerous
Dreamboard members sexually abused children, produced images and videos of the abuse,
and shared the images and videos with other members of Dreamboard.

Dreamboard members employed a variety of measures designed to conceal their
criminal activity from detection by law enforcement. Members communicated using aliases
or "screen names," rather than their actual names. Links to child pornography posted on
Dreamboard were required to be encrypted with a password that was shared only with
other members. Members accessed the board via proxy servers, which routed internet
traffic through other computers so as to disguise a user's actual location and prevent law
enforcement from tracing internet activity. Dreamboard members also encouraged the use
of encryption programs on their computers, which password-protect computer files to
prevent law enforcement from accessing them in the event of a court-authorized search.
Membership was tightly controlled by the administrators of Dreamboard, who
required prospective members to upload child pornography portraying children 12 years
of age or younger when applying for membership. Once they were given access, members
were required continually to upload images of child sexual abuse in order to maintain
membership. Members who failed to follow this rule would be expelled from the group.

According to court documents, Dreamboard members were divided into groups
based on status and ranking. The highest level of membership was "Super VIP(.)."
Individuals who obtained that title had created new images of child pornography by
molesting children and shared those images with the board administrators. The next level
of membership was "Super VIP," which was comprised of trusted members of the website.
The next level after Super VIP was the "VIP rank." Individuals in the lowest level of
membership were called "Members." Those in the lower ranks could only access a limited
quantity of child pornography on the bulletin board. The higher the rank, the more material
was available to the member. Individuals advanced to higher levels of membership by
providing child abuse images that the individual had produced, providing a large number
of images, or providing images that had never been seen before.

The bulletin board included rules of conduct, printed in English, Russian, Japanese
and Spanish. The rules required prospective members to upload material depicting children
under the age of 12 engaged in sexually explicit activity. Approved members were required
to observe strict posting rules designed to encourage members to disseminate large
quantities of child pornography, thwart efforts by law enforcement to identify members of
the board, and encourage members to sexually abuse children in order to produce new
material for the board. The board rules also required members to organize postings based
on the type of content. One particular category was entitled "Super Hardcore." The rules
for that category described in graphic language that the only posts permitted were those
involving adults having violent sexual intercourse with "very young kids" who were being
subjected to both physical and sexual abuse and were obviously "in distress, and or crying."
Operation Delego involved extensive international cooperation to identify and
apprehend Dreamboard members abroad. Through coordination between ICE; the
Department of Justice; Eurojust, the European Union's Judicial Cooperation Unit; and
dozens of law enforcement agencies throughout the world, 20 Dreamboard members across
five continents and 14 countries have been arrested to date outside the United States,
including two of the five lead administrators of the board. Those countries include Canada,
Denmark, Ecuador, France, Germany, Guatemala, Hungary, Kenya, the Netherlands, the
Philippines, Qatar, Serbia, Sweden and Switzerland. Numerous foreign investigations
related to Operation Delego remain ongoing. The location and arrest of Dreamboard
members abroad have led to the capture and investigation of other global targets.
Evidence obtained during the operation revealed that at least 38 children across the
world were suffering sexual abuse at the hands of the members of the group. Efforts by
federal, state, local and international law enforcement to locate and identify the victims of
sexual abuse and exploitation by Dreamboard members are ongoing.

Operation Delego is a spinoff investigation from leads developed through
"Operation Nest Egg," the prosecution of another online group dedicated to the sharing and
dissemination of child pornography. Operation Nest Egg was a spinoff investigation
developed from leads related to another international investigation, "Operation Joint
Hammer," which targeted transnational rings of child pornography trafficking.

United States Attorney Stephanie A. Finley stated, "The sentences reflect the
seriousness of this criminal activity. We know that there is more work to be done, and we
will continue investigating and prosecuting these cases to the fullest extent of the laws. We
want the community to know that the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Department of Justice,
along with our federal, state and local partners, are committed to protecting children from
these vile criminals. They can't hide on the internet, in other countries or behind fake
names."

Special Agent in Charge of ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) New
Orleans, Raymond R. Parmer Jr., stated, "This week alone we have seen eight significant
prison sentences handed down under Operation Delego to men involved with child
pornography, with more soon to come. Due to the outstanding teamwork demonstrated
in this case by HSI and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Louisiana, we
are aggressively seeking out child predators in our communities and prosecuting them to
the fullest extent of the law."

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Luke Walker of the
Western District of Louisiana and Trial Attorneys Keith Becker and Anitha Ibrahim of the
Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) of the Justice Department's Criminal
Division. The Criminal Division's Office of International Affairs provided substantial
assistance. The investigation was conducted by ICE-Homeland Security Investigations, the
Child Exploitation Section of ICE's Cyber Crimes Center, CEOS, CEOS's High Technology
Investigative Unit and 35 ICE offices in the United States and 11 ICE attaches offices in 13
countries around the world, with assistance provided by numerous local and international
law enforcement agencies across the United States and throughout the world.
The investigation was part of Operation Predator, a nationwide ICE initiative to
identify, investigate and arrest those who prey on children, including human traffickers,
international sex tourists, Internet pornographers and foreign-national predators whose
crimes make them deportable.

ICE encourages the public to report suspected child predators and any suspicious
activity through its toll-free hotline at 1-866-DHS-2ICE. This hotline is staffed around
the clock by investigators.