Freedom Hosting founder arrested in Ireland and awaiting extradition to US

The founder of Tor Freedom Hosting, 28-year-old Eric Owen Marquez, was arrested in Ireland. The US authorities are seeking his extradition, he was presented to the court as "the largest mediator of the distribution of child pornography on the planet."



Marquez, who has dual citizenship in Ireland and the United States, was arrested on the basis of a warrant of the state of Maryland, in which he is accused of distributing and promoting child pornography on the Internet. There is evidence that he allowed content providers to continue to post prohibited photos on their servers despite having received warnings repeatedly. The FBI took a year to establish his whereabouts.



In the past few days, Marquez transferred large sums of money to Romania, which he had visited several times before - he said that he transferred money to help his friends and ex-girlfriend - in particular, the last € 6,000 transferred were intended to a friend who wanted start a business. At the same time, Marquez's search queries showed that he was very actively interested in obtaining a visa to Russia.



It is worth recalling that two years ago servers with child pornography on Freedom Hosting were already attacked by Anonymous, they wrote about this on Habré .

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The US authorities are demanding his extradition on four charges; if convicted, he faces up to 30 years in prison. It is worth noting that, on Freedom Hosting, among other things, there are many hidden Tor services, including TorMail; Currently hosting is disabled and most of them are not working. Meanwhile, strange JS injections appeared on Tor sites.



The founder of Freedom Hosting is not affiliated with The Tor Project, Inc. - The Tor software development organization.



Source: independent.ie