‘World’s worst pedophile’ ran network of ‘hurtcore’ child porn websites: police

HE WAS a university student who still lived with his parents. But, as online detectives discovered, he also ran a network of “hurtcore” child porn sites on the dark web.

Most of the police legwork is performed online before the perpetrators are confronted in real life.

A PEDOPHILE considered one of the world’s worst has been identified as an Australian ­nanotechnology student who still lived with his parents.

Matthew David Graham used the pseudonym Lux to run a series of horrific “hurtcore” websites he called PedoEmpire involving children being abused and tortured.

Queensland’s Task Force Argos child protection unit was able to trace the sites to a Melbourne home where the 22-year-old lived with his family.

Argos detective Senior Constable Graham Pease and victim identification manager Paul Griffiths joined Victorian colleagues in a raid on the property in July.

“At that stage, we actually thought it was his dad because the way Lux spoke he seem­ed very intelligent and very ­articulate,” Sen-Constable Pease said.

“We got to the house and started talking to Dad and very quickly ruled Dad out of the picture. He was a 50-year-old guy who knows very little about computers.”

Taskforce Argos’ Graham Pease. Pic: Russell Shakespeare

However, it was another story for his skinny son, a “keyboard warrior” who had spent years holed up in his bedroom on his computer.

“We walked into Matthew Graham’s room, looked around and there were books from Nietzsche on the wall and he had all the computer games he was playing.

“We looked at each other and were going, ‘This is the guy’.”

Detectives had to trawl some of the most disturbing recesses of the internet.

The case can be revealed after Graham pleaded guilty on Wednesday to 13 child ­pornography charges, admitting his role as head of a global ­online child-abuse ring.

Graham is not believed to have directly abused children, instead harvesting material from a network of pedophiles and the internet for his own sites on the so-called dark web.

Access to the sites, which are out of view of search ­engines such as Google, was gained anonymously using Tor computer software.

He had at least eight sites under names such as Pedo­Chat, Hurt 2 the Core and No Limits Pedo Chat and was hosting sites for other ­pedophiles.

Taskforce Argos staff at work.

“It was the whole gamut. Hurt-core lovers in the pedophile community are people whose interest is, as ridiculous as it sounds to a normal person, hurting children,” Sen-Constable Pease said.

Graham, under his pseudonym Lux, abruptly shut down all the sites before he was arrested – falsely telling administrators he had a brain tumour.

The Daily Dot website, which once interviewed Lux through anonymous exchanges online, ran a story at the time with the headline “Internet’s worst paedophile abruptly shuts down his ‘PedoEmpire’.”

Most of the police legwork is performed online before the perpetrators are confronted in real life.

Argos had identified Graham during an investigation into Families South Australia carer Shannon McCoole, who ran the world’s largest online child abuse site.

Argos had secretly taken over McCoole’s online profile in a bid to track down his associates. Graham, a La Trobe University student, was a VIP member on McCoole’s site.

“In his own mind, he was a very broken young man and he was in dire need of a lot of help,” Sen-Constable Pease said of ­Graham.

“He ran the sites ­because he loved the attention and the ego-building of being this kingpin.”

Originally published as ‘World’s worst pedophile’ ran network of ‘hurtcore’ child porn websites: police