Ten people, including six men from Calgary, have been charged as a result of four-month-long child porn sting by Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams.

ALERT’s Internet Child Exploitation team, with the assistance of the Calgary Police Service, Lethbridge Police Service, and RCMP, executed 13 search warrants that led to the arrests of ten people on child porn charges. The first warrant was executed late last year.

Ten men are facing 30 charges of possessing, accessing, and making available child pornography:

Adam Broeske, 27, from Calgary

Brian Harrison, 65, from Pincher Creek

Brandon Hersey, 28, from Calgary

Paul Marshall, 47, from Lethbridge

Dave Munroe, 54, from Lethbridge

Matthew Rolph, 22, from Calgary

Ockert Swart, 28, from Calgary

Ian St. Lewis, 56, from Calgary

Randall Scott, 52, from Calgary

Kyle Ward, 27, from Okotoks

The sting, named Operation ‘ICE Storm’, targeted a number of individuals who were sharing images and videos over a variety of peer-to-peer file sharing networks.

“Thousands of photos and images of child exploitation videos are uploaded in southern Alberta daily. In this investigation we seized literally thousands of those images and videos. And unfortunately, the reality is that these arrests, this operation, is actually going to have a very minimum impact on the flow of those child sexual exploitation videos and images, “said S/Sgt. John Guigon from the Southern Alberta Internet child Exploitation Unit.

Police say that over 330 computers and electronic devices were seized and could contain thousands of images and videos.

Police say they hope the investigation sends a strong message to those who are sharing these kinds of images.

“The message is that we are watching. There is no anonymity for you. We are watching and we will target you for criminal investigation,” said Guigon.

Jonathan Denis, Alberta’s Minister of Justice and Solicitor General, thanked the efforts of authorities in making the arrests.

“I want to thank members of our Integrated Child Exploitation team for the excellent work they do every day to stop serious organized crimes such as child exploitation,” he said in a release.

More charges could be coming as forensic investigators analyze the seized equipment.

“Our forensic technicians are working towards analyzing all 336 of those seizures we’ve made and it’s very conceivable that they’ll discover more offences and possibly even more offenders so there could be more arrests in the future,” said Guigon.

Investigators say the priority is to protect the children and say people can call Cybertip to report the online exploitation of children.