Operation Nest Egg

Operation Nest Egg was an international law enforcement initiative aimed at dismantling an online network dedicated to the distribution and trade of child pornography. Launched in February 2008, the operation was a collaborative effort involving multiple law enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).^[1]

The primary focus of the investigation was the bulletin board style website thecachebbs.com which at its peak had around 1,000 members.^[2] As of February 2008, postal inspectors had already seized the main servers from Caro.net, a web host based in North Carolina. This caused periodic downtime which prompted the site admins to move the hosting to Atomic Colo in Minnesota. A backup server that was utilized during the periods of downtime was hosted by Future Hosting in Dallas, TX.^[1]

Operation Nest Egg was a spinoff investigation developed from leads related to another international investigation, "Operation Joint Hammer," which targeted transnational rings of child pornography trafficking. Operation Delego was a subsequent spinoff investigation from leads developed through "Operation Nest Egg," the prosecution of another online group dedicated to sharing and disseminating child pornography.^[3] Operation Joint Hammer was spawned by Operation Koala which led to 40 arrests in Britain, 21 in France, 11 in Spain, eight in Sweden, five in Belgium, four in Italy, two in Iceland and one in Denmark.^[4]