Penetrating the pedophile networks in the darkest corners of the internet is brutal and painstaking work for those agents tasked with shutting down the rapidly growing child-porn cybersex industry.

But the knocking over of an Australian man, an alleged kingpin in livestreaming the sexual abuse of children, is a huge blow to the ugly billion-dollar business, according to Glen Hulley, a former undercover Victorian cop who now hunts pedophiles across south east Asia.

Peter Gerard Scully was arrested in February, 2015 and charged with a series of ghoulish crimes, including the murder of an 12-year-old Filipina and the torture and sexual abuse of at least eight young girls, including an 18-month-old infant.

Scully, who is still awaiting trial in the Philippines, amid clamouring for a death penalty sentence, allegedly ran a pay-per-view livestreaming service of children being tortured and sexually abused on the dark web.

Gerard Peter Scully of Australia (L), an alleged kingpin of a child porn cyber den in the Philippines. Source: AFP

The raid on 54-year-old Scully's cybersex den, located on an island in the Philippines where he has lived since fleeing fraud charges in Melbourne in 2011, allowed police to seize his prized hard drives.

Digital forensics teams trawled through the computers and have since broken into a covert web of international pedophiles, including Australians, Hulley told nine.com.au .

Hulley said, based on shared intelligence from the FBI and AFP, that Australians are not just watching the illegal content, but "absolutely involved" in its creation, financing and extreme profits.

"The Philippines is definitely a hot spot for live streaming abuse of children," Hulley said.

"Where there is a demand, organised crime are the experts in delivering supply. Now that they are involved, these cyber dens are popping up all over the place in south east Asia."

Glen Hulley, a former Victoria policeman, heads up Project Karma, a charitable organisation that tracks down child sex tourists from Australia and the west, and rescues children in a number of those poverty-stricken countries. Source: Project Karma.

Former Victorian cop Hulley heads Project Karma , a charitable organisation that tracks down child sex tourists from Australia and the west, and rescues children in a number of those poverty-stricken countries.

Hulley helped international law enforcement develop intelligence on Aussie ex-pat Scully, and he has worked to shut down seedy child cybersex dens in Philippines.

Webcam sex tourism is undoubtedly on the rise and the Philippines is ground zero, Hulley said.

Filipinos speak good English and the Philippines has excellent internet infrastructure. With its huge number of workers around the globe, the transfer of international currencies in and out of the country is world-class.

Add poverty to that mix – the average Filipino annual salary is just $2700 – and it is a perfect storm for the proliferation of cybersex dens across the country.

Suspects in an alleged Internet porn operation cover themselves at the Cybercrime Division of the NBI in Manila on Fenruary 18, 2014. Source: AFP

Hulley told nine.com.au about a raid Project Karma helped carry out on a cybersex den in Mindanao in the Philippines, where 15 children were rescued.

For more than two years, young boys and girls worked daily shifts in front of a webcam, obeying explicit instructions from sex predators from Australia and around the world.

Most of the children's parents knew what was going on, Hulley said, and many were even actively involved in the operation.

"These children, they were conditioned to turn up every day,” he said.

"It was normal behaviour to turn up, spend two hours sitting in front of a webcam ... and go home with 1000 pesos ($25) in your pocket.

A Filipino National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) agent inspects confiscated desktop computers allegedly used for cybersex crime. Source: AFP

"They had mobile phones, laptops and iPads, all the things that Filipino children do not have."

Hulley estimated that the syndicate was generating $5000 a day, which he said was the equivalent of an Australian earning a $100m salary.

The FBI is alarmed by the rise of online child exploitation. It estimates that, at any given moment, 750,000 child predators are online.

Earlier this month, the FBI and a Philippines special taskforce took down an American called David Deakin, 53, another alleged cybersex kingpin.

The raid on Deakin's two-storey apartment in Mabalacat, north west of Manila, uncovered a nightmarish array of children's underwear, meth pipes, bondage-style leather collars, camera kit and movies of young boys and girls. Hulley claimed the intelligence used to snare Deakins had originated from the bust on Scully.

He predicted a significant number of arrests in the Philippines and Australia will follow over next 12 months as the result of a massive joint effort by police in Asia, the FBI and AFP since Scully's arrest.

Children living in poverty-stricken Philippines are often farmed out by their parents to cybersex operations to earn money for the family. Source: AFP

Hulley feared the child cybersex industry is "growing rampantly" and "only going to get bigger and bigger".

It was incredibly difficult to fight against agile operations with links to corrupt officials who were prepared to warn the child pornographers that a bust was imminent, he said.

Hulley said the key to stopping the explosive growth is to tackle poverty "otherwise it will go on and on".

Project Karma, Hulley's organisation, works with local communities to generate awareness and grow jobs.

Hulley has worked closely with Senator Derryn Hinch to develop new legislation, known as Karma's Law, to ban international travel for registered child sex offenders.