Only users who provided “first generation” child abuse images could progress into The Annex (Image: Getty)
More than a thousand people who became “respected” members of a sickening dark web paedophile-sharing website, by providing it with new abuse material, have evaded detection.
Some “promoted users” of The Annex, which glorified extreme kinds of abuse material, involving “hurtcore” and sexual abuse of babies and toddlers, could be still active in the UK, as the site was predominantly being run by twisted paedophiles based here and in the US.
Undercover National Crime Agency (NCA) investigators were able to get into a basic area of the horrific website, called The Gateway.
However, they could not progress any further, as there was a strict requirement new members had to provide “first generation” images of new child abuse being carried out to be promoted.
The third sentence of three UK-based senior “moderators” of the now defunct site took place last Monday
Martin Yates, 48, from Eastbourne, was jailed for five years and four months at Lewes Crown Court for his role as assistant moderator between January and September 2020.
Nathan Bake led The Annex after the arrest of its US leader (Image: NCA)
Yates played a key role enforcing rules by promoting or dropping other users, providing access to private sections and advising on security measures.
Nathan Bake, 28, a Runcorn mechanic, was the site’s second-in-command and led it after the arrest of its leader US leader forces veteran William Spearman, 58, from Alabama, who was sentenced to life in prison there in January.
Bake was jailed for 16 years at Chester Crown Court after admitting 12 offences in connection with the running of the site on February 14.
When arrested Bake was found in possession of a 576-page paedophile manual which described how to groom and abuse single mothers and parents of vulnerable children and how to abuse the children while evading detection.
It was eight months after NHS psychiatrist Kabir Garg, from Lewisham, was jailed for six years at Woolwich Crown Court after he admitted several offences connected to the site.
Garg worked his way up to a moderator by putting in two-hour shifts on the website daily before commuting to work at Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.
Martin Yates was a moderator first arrested by the NCA (Image: NCA)
Aside from Spearman, there have been 13 other arrests in the US with seven more moderators jailed.
However, a joint National Crime Agency (NCA) and FBI investigation has yet to identify at least 13 other senior moderators.
Now Express.co.uk can reveal that at least a further 1,180 of the estimated 90,000 people using the site had also been “promoted” into more senior roles, with none of them brought to justice on either side of the Atlantic.
The probe started in the US, with the FBI executing a search warrant at Spearman’s address on June 30 2022.
During the search, the FBI seized a copy of the computer server hosting The Annex, which was shared with the NCA a month later, due to the high level of activity seen in the UK.
In total, they obtained 1.9 million posts and 9.6 million files going back to April 2019.
Kabir Garg was an NHS psychiatrist at the time of his offending (Image: NCA)
Data sent to the NCA included a record of which users had been promoted higher than a regular account.
At the time of the dataset, there were 810 accounts that had been recorded as promoted to access a lobby area where they could share images and talk to other twisted users.
A further 370 accounts had been promoted to a status known as “Hearts” who could access the most harmful material graded by children’s ages, including five years and younger and a “no-limits” chat room.
Details identifying Yates were found and he was arrested in July 2022.
Bake and Garg were identified later that year in November.
Asked in a press briefing if it was likely Annex users who committed real child abuse were still at large, NCA Senior Officer Mark Edmondson said: “Undoubtedly, yes there will be offenders who used these groups, not only to access images, but to share images of their own offending.”
Jen Cruickshank, NCA SIO, said: “We continue to work closely with international partners to ensure offenders like Bake, Yates and Garg are identified and brought to justice.”
An NCA spokesman added: “There are a number of ongoing investigations internationally by a range of partners.
“Users of these sites will always be prosecuted if identified. (Use of) TOR complicates this.
“This was an English language site which had a global audience, so it cannot be said the remaining staff, or indeed those that used the site, are exclusive to the UK and US. They definitely were not.”
