“This case has really challenged people to reconsider what nudism and child modelling are. It’s caused countries around the world to look at this material and ask whether it’s OK for doctors, teachers, daycare providers and hockey coaches to be buying this kind of material.” Lisa Belanger Toronto police detective constable who led the investigation

The customers logged in from around the world: Germany. Spain. Mexico. Australia. Hundreds from Canada and the United States. They came from all walks of life; they worked as schoolteachers and newspaper editors, as police officers and doctors.

What they had in common, police allege, was that they paid a Toronto man to provide them with explicit “naturist” videos of children — and, as a result, they are now caught up in what is believed to be the smashing of the largest, most extensive commercial child pornography ring ever uncovered in Canada.

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Among law enforcement, the investigation is known as Project Spade.

For nearly a year, a team of Star reporters was granted exclusive behind-the-scenes access to the child exploitation unit of the Toronto Police Service as they brought their three-year investigation to a conclusion on Thursday.

At the centre of the ring, police allege, is Brian Way: A 42-year-old with a thin goatee and carefully groomed hair, he faces 24 charges of making, possessing, distributing, exporting and selling the explicit images of boys — who range in age from toddlers to teens — in videos that investigators say were edited, packaged and sold from his west-end Toronto warehouse.

They have also laid a charge of instructing a criminal organization, the first time this has been done in relation to a child pornography investigation. It is a charge more usually associated with gangs or organized crime.

“This case has really challenged people to reconsider what nudism and child modelling are,” said Toronto police Detective-Constable Lisa Belanger, who led the investigation. “It’s caused countries around the world to look at this material and ask whether it’s OK for doctors, teachers, daycare providers and hockey coaches to be buying this kind of material. Countries from South Africa to Australia, Isle of Man to Hong Kong and Spain have all said it’s not OK. I think it’s going to have ripple effects everywhere.”

The charges against Way, who is in custody, have not yet been proven in court. His lawyer, Nyron Dwyer, declined repeated requests for comment on behalf of his client.

Among Way’s alleged Canadian clients are a Chatham volunteer hockey coach, a teacher in Toronto, a priest and a Boy Scout leader in Quebec, and a retired high-school principal in Nova Scotia.

In the U.S., those arrested include police officers, a high-profile pediatrician, school teachers, principals and coaches and a Boy Scout leader.

In all, 108 Canadians have been arrested in Project Spade sweeps (50 in Ontario, of whom at least 20 have so far pleaded guilty to various charges). Another 76 Americans face charges. Internationally, another 164 are before the courts. And hundreds more remain under investigation.

Even as Toronto detectives revealed Project Spade to the world at a news conference Thursday at police headquarters, the arrests kept coming: Swedish police reported another batch, bringing the global total of arrests to 348.

Among them in Canada: Forty school teachers, nine doctors and nurses, 32 people who volunteer with children, six law enforcement personnel, nine pastors and priests and three foster parents.

As police dug deeper into the suspects’ activities, they discovered that many had not simply been purchasing alleged child pornography images and videos, but were actively engaged in hands-on abuse of children.

In all, police say 386 children were rescued from direct abuse and exploitation as a result of the Spade investigation — including 24 Canadian children and more than 330 children in the U.S.

Modest start

For an investigation that would eventually cross international borders into more than 90 countries and include dozens of law enforcement agencies, the genesis of Project Spade began locally, nearly a decade ago.

Way, police allege, began his business — characterized now as a clandestine, large-volume international network — modestly. They say he started by buying films from other companies and redistributing them, online, under his own company name: 4PSP Inc.

But Way’s site, and success, attracted attention. By 2004, police had received more than 30 complaints about the site, says Belanger.

On the surface, it appeared to be a legal “naturist” site, showcasing what were billed as artistic films that featured nude boys. But officers decided a closer look was needed, and an investigation was launched in 2006. They looked at Way’s material and found nudity — worrying to many, but not enough to meet the strict legal parameters of child pornography.

It was decided police couldn’t lay charges, but they warned Way the material was questionable.

With that, Way disappeared from police radar — until detectives stumbled across him as part of a separate investigation years later.

In October 2010, as part of his routine work, Toronto police sex crimes unit investigator Det. Paul Krawczyk was downloading child abuse images from an anonymous online porn trader, who appeared to have a vast library of material. (Officers often pose undercover as pedophiles in order to identify targets and gather evidence.) Krawczyk, one of the most experienced investigators in Canada in the field, was taken aback by the extent of the material in his new target’s possession.

“It was one of the biggest collections of child pornography we’d ever seen,” Krawczyk says.

He discovered the anonymous figure behind the online porn library was Brian Way. That’s when police computers flagged his name from the previous investigation. The connection led to the creation of Project Spade.

By this time, 4PSP Inc. had morphed into a new site: Azovfilms.com.

The site was an Amazon-like marketplace, “featuring coming-of-age and naturist films,” the website claimed. There were Top 10 lists and reviews for discerning customers; a searchable catalogue; and digital downloads and credit card payments were available.

The site boasted more than two million unique visitors in 2009; by 2010, the number was more than three million.

It also had an extensive legal page, where clients were assured that “no film we sell violates Canadian or American law.” This, after all, was a site that was supposed to feature wholesome naturist films.

But if police could prove, and they have yet to do so, that the videos focused on the genital area, and were for a “sexual purpose” rather than for artistic merit, they could build a case for child exploitation.

In order to do that, they were going to have to get copies of what Way was selling, and that was not going to be easy.

“He was super, super-careful,” Krawczyk says. “He denied 10 to 15 orders a day because he was so very careful.”

What followed was a two-year cat-and-mouse game.

Appeared ordinary

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To casual observers in the industrial area of west Toronto where his website was headquartered, Way appeared to live the most ordinary of lives.

Each morning, he would don jeans and a sweatshirt and head to his nondescript office on The Queensway, walk over to Tim Hortons for coffee and a bagel — then disappear back behind the mirrored door, next to the black mailbox.

His mailman called Way a charming man who always remembered him with a bottle of wine at Christmas. The teller who saw Way regularly when he did his banking hired him to photograph her wedding. And no one, including the tenants who shared space in his building, knew what went on behind the mirrored door.

Police staked out the office and saw a bustling business. Trucks came and went, Belanger says. And while many of the customers chose to download videos digitally, many remained devoted to hard-copy DVDs, which were dispatched by courier.

Police needed to obtain video evidence, but not trigger alarm bells. The Canadian officers decided on a solution: because so many of the site’s customers were in the U.S., the Toronto officers looked south for a law enforcement partner.

Enter Insp. Brian Bone. He is the program manager for a team of investigators at the U.S. Postal Inspection Service that specialize in child exploitation cases — and if it seems unlikely that postal employees hunt pedophiles, it’s because even in this high-tech age, a lot of child pornography still gets delivered via mail and by courier.

Bone placed his first successful order from Azovfilms.com in February 2011. He kept going. All told, he would purchase 10 DVDs, five of which met both the Canadian and U.S. legal standards as child pornography, police allege.

(In Canada, child pornography is defined as images or videos that depict, or appear to depict, a person under 18 in explicit sexual activity, or shows “for a sexual purpose . . . a sexual organ or the anal region of a person under the age of 18 years.” U.S. law is similar.)

“This is one of the larger cases we’ve had in recent memory because of the international scope,” Bone said. “It touched all 50 states and many countries across the world. We’ve been successfully able to target suspects of the company and the operators and bring a lot of people to justice.”

Investigators who have seen the videos describe them the same way: All boys. All young. Some are very young.

“There’s a scene with a blow-up pool in an apartment with baby oil,” Belanger says. “One child in a movie takes 15 showers — all these kids we knew were being exploited.”

Joanna Beaven-Desjardins, unit commander of the Toronto Police’s sex crimes unit, alleges the images contained in hundreds of thousands of videos depict, “horrific sexual acts against very young children – some of the worst (officers) have ever viewed.”

By May 1, 2011, Belanger had search warrants for seven Toronto addresses, including Way’s home, post-office boxes, safety deposit boxes, car — and the office behind the mirrored door.

The operational plan for the bust — essentially the police’s play-by-play guide — ran 30 pages long, and 30 officers were involved. Way was arrested as he made his usual coffee-and-bagel run.

Once he was in custody, other officers sprang into action.

Inside Way’s Etobicoke condo unit in the Mystic Pointe development alongside the Gardiner Expressway, a laptop hummed away. It had been left powered up and logged on — which was crucial for police. That meant they were able to access his servers, free from encryption.

In his nearby office, another team of officers discovered shelves lined with a massive library of videos. They seized 1,000 pieces of evidence: computer servers, DVD burners, a video editing suite — and rows and rows of movies.

Belanger says spreadsheets on computers showed revenue of about $1.6 million over two years. (Ultimately, police said the company had revenues of over $4 million.) They also discovered something that expanded Project Spade’s scope: a list of customers.

Belanger and eight colleagues spent the summer screening more than 500 movies. They logged what they saw — and by the time they stopped counting they had catalogued 283,000 digital images of alleged child pornography, and another 10,000 videos in what they allege is Way’s personal collection.

Many of the site’s bestselling videos focus on a group of young boys in Eastern Europe. Police ultimately determined they were in Romania and Ukraine — and that they were being exploited for profit. The Romanian children were recruited from karate schools across the northern region of the country.

“Parents were being told their kids were going on karate trips, and they were being allowed to drink, do drugs, watch pornography and have naked videos made of them,” says Belanger.

The investigators ultimately focused on 160 of the most troubling videos they had seized. Because they had the customer list, detectives cross-referenced the disturbing films with the Azovfilms.com clients who they believed had purchased them.

Nearly a dozen search warrants were obtained focused on men in Toronto; seven were eventually arrested. (Most of them remain before the courts.) The Toronto officers shared their client lists with law enforcement around the world, and parallel investigations have been underway for two years in dozens of other countries.

In all, nearly 350 men around the world have been arrested to date. Investigations are still underway in many countries.

Way remains in custody. His preliminary hearing — during which a judge decides if there is enough evidence to send an accused to trial — is still ongoing, with another date set for next month.

On a cold, rainy morning last December, he walked into a North York courtroom handcuffed and dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit. Police were methodically laying out their case, and as the afternoon continued, Way stifled yawns and chatted with his lawyer. He appeared relaxed.

Police and prosecutors believe a long legal battle looms.

“This case demonstrates what we always suspected about naturist or child modelling sites — if it looks like they’re exploiting children, it’s likely they are,” Belanger says. “This project shows that the commercialization of children this way can be pornographic, and we have to investigate it.

“What was going on behind the scenes,” she alleges, “was child abuse.”