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Operation Ore exposed

Posted on 1 Jul 2005 at 11:08

I wasn't the first person to spot this. In January 2003, as the Ore raids mounted into the thousands, the National Crime Squad in London received copies of all the computer files used for the 1999 US investigation. Among the computer files were copies of web pages recorded by Nelson. One file was a copy of the real Landslide front page, dominated by the company's logo.

On 5 February 2003, Detective Constable Girling circulated a short witness statement, setting the record straight and producing the real Landslide front page.

NCS passed the US computer files to a specialist computer forensic company called CELT, with instructions to rebuild the Landslide and Keyz web pages. At CELT, expert Dr Sam Type found more contradictions to the American evidence. Nelson and Mead had both sworn statements that Keyz websites could be reached from the Landslide homepage. 'Absolutely no way,' reported Dr Type. After rebuilding the Texas website, she dismissed the idea that Keyz was a service devoted to child porn.

In a further report in November last year, Dr Type confirmed that the 'Click here' child porn advertisement was never seen on the Landslide front page. It was 'actually the AVS front page', she wrote. The 'child porn' banner ad, she found, wasn't on any of Landslide's computers; it had come from elsewhere.

Key witness

This February, a British court required Mead's attendance for an Operation Ore case. He gave evidence by means of a satellite video link from Texas to the Crown Court in Derby. On oath, Mead stated that he and Nelson had only ever seen the 'Click Here Child Porn button' appear once, at the very start of their investigation. He accepted that the photograph only showed part of the page. 'The child porn link was at the bottom,' he said.

He was asked: 'In June 1999, it is likely that the 'Click here for child porn' was not on the Landslide's homepage?'

'Correct,' he replied.

The Derby jury found the defendant not guilty. Although his barrister forbore to say so, Mead's admissions took apart the impression Nelson had given two years before. Mead had previously backed up Nelson's story. In a sworn statement given to a British police officer in 2 October 2002, Mead had said: 'During the time we monitored the website, the banners did not alter in any way.' He had changed his story.

Trial of the mind

Establishing these errors does not mean that everyone suspected in Operation Ore was falsely and unfairly accused. Far from it. But the issues revealed above have been combined with carelessness, a media rabble and a tabloid-feeding frenzy to produce systematic injustice.

My work so far has led to three Ore defendants being acquitted and to all the American evidence being ditched in respect of a fourth. But even for those never charged, or acquitted before trial, the experiences are so scarring that no-one wants to talk.

The sole exception I have encountered is a man who runs his own computer-programming company. Like many men, from time to time he would signed up for adult images on the Net. In the summer of 1999, he saw that his credit card details had been used over and over again on the Landslide website. He complained quickly, got a full refund and thought no more of it. Until the knock on his door three years later.

'It is a trial of the mind,' he said. 'I lost mine at the time. If people are guilty, they can say to themselves, yes, been there, done that. But if you have not, then it is impossible to make sense of what is happening to your life.'