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Former Detective, Dallas Texas. July 30th 2006 'No trace of vital child porn witness' http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-1507-2291592-1507,00.html July 31st 2006 Another Nelson lie A reminder of what Nelson said in relation to the Irish case. When asked if he would be prepared to testify at any future inquiry or impeachment hearing, Nelson said: ``Yeah. In the normal course of my business I will do whatever is required.'' Detective Steven Nelson was a designated expert witness and in common with other ICAC investigators, he was a Special Deputy US Marshal. (ICAC, Internet Crimes Against Children, are attached to the FBI). Detective Nelson was the man who started the story of the 'click here child porn' banner. His testimony in that regard was shot to pieces when an eminent independent UK expert, Duncan Campbell, presented his findings based on carefully researched evidence. Overnight, the killer evidence, was history, and unfortunately for police in the UK, it was evidenced that this was something the managers of Operation Ore at the National Crime Squad and Celt Limited, their forensic partners, and others, were all too aware of. A computer magazine on sale in W H Smiths, had destroyed the key propaganda on which Operation Ore was based, propaganda that was used as evidence, and false evidence that had quite literally killed people. Innocent people were prepared to, or did, plead guilty on this evidence alone. It is therefore very much in the public interest that more of his sworn testimony is examined in detail, as this is evidence that was used in the US and UK. Landslide operated a number of payment schemes. It is quite clear from the testimony, that the US authorities, wanted to paint AVS as a completely legitimate adult part of Landslide, Keyz as all underage imagery. (The omission to document AVS in detail, e.g. AVS, AVS Gold and AVS Platinum, largely airbrushed out of the picture, represent further issues of specific relevance to Operation Ore and may be specifically addressed in future updates). To nail Thomas Reedy, (and it was also used with malice against Orees), the suggestion was made that contentious age imagery was responsible for huge profits at Landslide, in fact more profits than Landslide actually made if you take the time and trouble to try to add up the figures used to put Thomas Reedy behind bars. R C Adams of USPIS stated in sworn testimony that 85% of the revenue was from such imagery. All lies of course, but it was important to add some context to the sworn testimony of Mr Nelson, before analysing more of his evidence. Steven Nelson said verbatim in sworn testimony:
That statement is of course highly significant in the context of Operation Ore, and that small paragraph is therefore worth examining in detail. "During the course of my investigation I was able to access the AVS.COM web site." AVS.COM was a domain used by a software company unconnected with Landslide, it was not an adult site at all. We can only assume this forensic expert was referring to the AVS service that Landslide provided from the avs.landslide.com sub domain, though missing out Landslide is a surprising mistake and we have suspicions that this intimates another error. It is important, in view of other evidence we have seen, to mention that AVS was a generic term, and AVS does not automatically refer to Landslide at all. AVS simply means Adult Verification System, a legal requirement for a time in the US. It was supposedly an attempt to prevent minors from accessing adult material, in practice it simply provided a massive opportunity for credit card fraud and adult revenue. Regardless, the legislation was futile, never enforced and was itself ruled illegal, falling foul of the US constitution. In the case of Landslide, their AVS system was called AVS, but a vast number of schemes existed of the same kind with different names, for example, AdultCheck was an AVS system. We have not been able to prove why evidence was collected in the Landslide investigation in relation to illegal sites with AVS links that weren't connected with Landslide at all. "I discovered that it was predominately an adult oriented pornography site offering explicit sexual material." That is an accurate statement, if slightly emotive, but 'predominately adult' raises a question that has not been answered. In the specific context, the omission was a significant error. As it happens, the same statement could be applied to the KeyZ site list that is being used in Operation Ore. The term KeyZ was used as if it was intrinsically incriminating, it was not, highlighting the danger of false or incomplete testimony. One significant difference with Keyz was the fact that it was used remotely, that is, you signed up to an adult site and in normal circumstances would only arrive at Landslide KeyZ for payment or access authentication. This was payment per site, so it would have been a fairly simple task for the SOCA units, NCS and NCIS, to eliminate most of the people on the list from the outset, as they would have just visited a normal adult site, and that is not suspicious or incriminating. The National Crime Squad had quite different intentions however, and unfortunately for them, they evidenced their crimes by what they said and what they did as well as in what they didn't say and didn't do. In the case of AVS, referring site names were also passed, however, users could have signed up directly at Landslide having arrived at the AVS portal, by advertising or search links from outside (the referral was 'NoSite' when signing up directly at Landslide). AVS was not just a payment system, it was an adult portal in itself, so users could join up directly and once subscribed, could tour the range of sites available. Put simply, if people signed up directly, you would not know where they had been, but with well over 1700 standard AVS sites available on a date we used for detailed investigation, there were not, we would contend, reasonable grounds to suspect that someone had committed an offence. "Clients paid one fee of US $19.95 to access, view and download the images for a one year period." Clients paid $19.95 to access the Landslide AVS service for one year is what we presume detective Nelson was saying. It is clear that the prosecutors in the US and the UK wanted to make it look like vast sums of money were coming from illegal material, and therefore to separate the adult side from the illicit side and make one side expensive and one side insignificant. What is true to say is that KeyZ is a more profitable revenue scheme than AVS for Landslide and webmasters alike, as payment is made per site rather than for a range of sites. Dallas Police officer Steven A Nelson was again stretching the point. AVS subscribers normally paid $19.95 for one month, not for one year. The difference between what detective Nelson said and the truth was out by a factor of 12:1. The AVS price scheme is shown below, as it was offered via the Landslide AVS signup site (avs.landslide.com/signup/avs.cgi).
Back in 1997, AVS was advertised at a charge of $19.95 for a year and the public archive evidences that from 07/05/1998, $19.95 provided AVS access for only a month, so it is rather strange that detective Nelson should quote the starting position, if indeed that is what he was doing. It should be noted, the investigation was triggered by information supplied to detective Nelson by R C Adams on 22/04/1999. Links are supplied to allow the evidence to be reviewed, first a reconstruction of the Landslide AVS signup page as at 04/05/1999, and a reconstruction is only used so that links are neutralised though evidential links to the public archive are also provided. Contrary to the propaganda, 'this site' as the UK law enforcement agencies like to call it, is quite safe to pull up with young children present, but if you leave this site, one careless click of the mouse could cost you your family, 10 years in jail, life on the sex offenders register. You will notice the payment options available for AVS and the associated access durations (you will need to click the charge selection drop down to see the AVS charge detective Nelson refers to, as AVS Gold is the default). AVS sign up page (reconstructed - all links neutralised) AVS sign up page on public archive (evidential) WARNING - do not click any links here 07/05/1998 (1 month) You might also notice, if you look carefully, how far down you have to go and how hard you have to look to find the Landslide name on the page. With credit card fraudsters, they tend to not make their names too easy to find, a little bit like commercial contracts, the truth is there, but there in the small print. If you checked either of the above links, you might like to look again if you missed the Landslide name. You might also notice that AVS Gold and AVS Platinum have not been mentioned explicitly by detective Nelson and there are some issues there of specific relevance to what happened in Operation Ore which may be covered later. 24/12/1997 ($19.95 for 1 year) The dates above represent those on which the public archive acquired data. "It did not contain child pornography." Once again, our detective Nelson has provided false evidence by saying that AVS sites did not provide child pornography. Again, one can obtain evidence from the public archives, but for obvious reasons, we do not present the evidence here. It is also appropriate to mention, child pornography is an emotive and misleading term. Currently in the UK, an image relating to someone who the police allege is under 18 would be considered an issue relating to child pornography. An expert witness should supply neutral expert territory, and part of their duty is often to translate that expert evidence by way of explanation, that it can be understood and used by others who do not have the same level of expertise. "I was also able to access the KEYZ.COM web site and discovered that it contained access to child pornography." Potentially very misleading. It is also odd to use the word 'discovered'. The fact is that some web sites of such a nature were already known to be using the Landslide KeyZ payment system, that is why USPIS had instigated the investigation, and enlisted the help of Dallas Police. It was supposed to be Nelson's role to evidence the fact, so discover is a strange word to have used in the context, particularly for a forensic expert. It is an important point that with KeyZ, signups were to a site outside of Landslide (unless it was a Landslide owned site, which were legal), and subscribers would normally only visit the Landslide keyz.com domain for payment or access authentication. This statement by detective Nelson is therefore misleading, as one could easily presume someone went to KeyZ and saw child pornography there. That would be an entirely false assumption, keyz.com simply provided payment clearance or access authentication, it was not a portal. Conclusion There is rather a lot of evidence to suggest that Steven Nelson was a liar, and not a competent one at that. At the time he made this statement, he had been, according to him, involved in 3,200 cases involving child imagery and child exploitation. We would suggest to the US law enforcement authorities, that any cases involving this detective are re-investigated as a matter of urgency, this of course should also include the trial of Thomas Reedy. The fact these issues were patently obvious or known by the National Crime Squad and Celt Limited, raises very serious questions. In relation to such issues, the IPCC are currently reviewing appeals into criminal allegations against some of the ringleaders of Operation Ore. Bill Hughes, Director General of SOCA, the UK version of the FBI, made the following statement in the Daily Telegraph in relation to Operation Ore (Director General of NCS at the time): "I would like to reassure the public that the police approach has been to identify suspects and categorise them in respect of the potential risk that they pose to children. This has been a painstaking process, as we are aware that accurate reporting is vital, as incorrect allegations could ruin a person's life or damage the prospects of a fair trial." Contradictions Steven Nelson (Dallas PD) cross by Wes Ball in the Landslide trial (V2 P279-280) 28/11/2000 (US evidence) Q. All right. Do you know how many sites, from your investigation, how many sites were you able to determine were under the KeyZ system? Detective Nelson provided evidence captured from 12 websites using the landslide payment system. All the material on those sites was illegal, and it wasn't all illegal, all in the same statement (contradicting what was actually shown in court). Nelson's testimony and public statements have perhaps been reported on most, as he was a lazy liar, he didn't seem to care that his statements could be so easily evidenced as false and wilfully so. One is left to presume that RC Adams (USPIS), who led the investigation, was happy for the UK police to be supplied with this evidence, along with Michael Mead (USPIS) who not only presented testimony of his own at the time, but who also actively tried to support the evidence Nelson provided as it was gradually dismantled during the progress of Operation Ore. Steven Nelson is one of the most investigated detectives of all time. He spoke rather a lot, he lied rather a lot and rather badly. He said there was a click here banner slap bang on the home page of Landslide that was always there and never changed, and the grainy image he produced contaminated the entire jury pool in the United Kingdom. Detective Nelson visited the real home page of Landslide and when no such banner was there. Despite the praise of Terri Moore, he was never capable of doing what was claimed of him. Unfortunately for those that helped him, Nelson broke the golden rule of rogue cops, he not only knew too much he talked too much. Quite accidentally he gave away what others had done, indeed opening up a trail of evidence that would prove it. Former Dallas detective Steven Nelson also provided sworn testimony in the trial in relation to the ‘childgod’ website. Then a detective of 26 years he testified that he captured the contents of the website on the 15th of June 1999. Steven A. Nelson Dallas PD – Direct – Prosecuting attorney Terri Moore Q, What is that exhibit? Investigation of the Landslide forensics and additional evidence confirms Steven Nelson DID NOT pay Landslide to access ‘childgod’ as per his testimony.
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