Thomas Reedy set out to follow the rags to riches trail like so many Internet entrepreneurs of the time, following his earlier career as a nurse. The easiest money was to be found in the largest and most accessible market, adult entertainment. Pornography had universal appeal and remains a major commercial beneficiary of the Internet to this day. Starting in 1997, Thomas Reedy dabbled with peripheral activities like banner exchanges and classified adverts, in an attempt to capture some of the click through market and generate site traffic.

Due to changes in US law (Communications Decency Act - CDA - passed in February 1996), adult web sites were required for a time to prevent minors from accessing adult material, after senator James Exon attempted to regulate free speech on the Internet in 1995. This was struck down only to be followed in 1998 by the COPA (child online protection act).

A large number of verification and payment schemes were introduced by the adult industry in response to the legislation. These were intermediaries, as they typically did not actually clear the payments, rather they had Internet merchant accounts and resold the service to adult webmasters. A whole proliferation of verifications schemes appeared. Landslide effectively became a viable business when it introduced it’s own payment system called AVS (Adult Verification Service). The law was sold on the false premise that it would protect children but it could only feed crime and lead to conviction of adults for issues they had no control over. Senator Exon did not even understand the Internet, the law was never enforced and it was ruled unconstitutional as it interfered with the first amendment (first amendment protected the freedom of Religion, Press, Expression - ratified 1791). Repeated attempts were made to reinstate it, one by George Bush’s administration, but all were unsuccessful. Unlike the UK, the US has a written constitution and there are powerful public protection groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Citizens Internet Empowerment Coalition (CIEC) and the Centre for Democracy & Technology (CDT).

Many adult verification systems just asked for credit card details as proof of age. In practice, many of these schemes were used as an opportunity for the unscrupulous to commit fraud. One US investigation into one such scheme alone revealing a 230 million dollar fraud. The AVS system at Landslide worked by charging subscribers and in return offering access to a menu of predominantly adult websites.

Keyz Webmaster Revenue

Keyz payment was access on a per site basis and 65% of the profit was paid out to webmasters. Webmasters could mix a range of prices and access durations. Access durations consisted of 7 days, 2 weeks, 30 days, 60 days and 90 days. Charge options consisted of $9.95, $14.95, $19.95, $24.95 and $29.95.

In the appeal of Thomas Reedy, it was reported that AVS subscribers paid $19.95 for 6 months access to adult only websites and KeyZ subscribers paid $29.95 for 1 months access. You will notice from the above charging configurations, the US authorities did not tell the truth. They wanted to crucify Thomas Reedy and it was in their interests to talk up the child pornography issues. As it happens, due to various scams operating on websites that used Landslide, other charges were also applied outside of the above options for AVS and KeyZ. The chief investigator and expert for the trial of Thomas Reedy was Mike Marshall, a Fort Worth Police Officer and former Microsoft employee, who had already been asked to resign as a police officer due to misconduct.

Mike Marshall was the lead investigator for the Texas attorney general's Internet Bureau, instigated in September 2000 following an $800,000 grant from the governor's office. Marshall once said 'If the computer evidence is all you've got, your got a problem'.

Nelson obtained evidence for him accessing various web sites. He was using Web Buddy which allowed him to capture the web pages, yet a grainy stretched video capture of part of a screen was passed to the UK as evidence and used in subsequent trials in Operation Ore. Although Web buddy would have allowed him to present perfect copy of the web sites visited, only a blurred video capture was produced, it's quality making it impossible to determine whether this was genuine, or whether the infamous 'click here' banner was like so much of the Landslide story, pure fiction.

Curiously, three webmasters in Russia (Boris Greenberg - 1 Keyz site) and Indonesia (R W Kusama - 2 keyz sites and Hanny Ingganata - 5 Keyz sites) were indicted along with Thomas Reedy on the basis that they had exclusively used the Landslide Keyz system. Curiously, as at that time most world wide child pornography material was held on web servers in the US (source IWF), and a range of payment schemes outside of Landslide were uncovered from independent investigations of these webmasters. For legal reasons, to maximise the severity of the indictments, the prosecution needed a conspiracy involving at least five people, so five people were indicted.

From the media coverage, one could well believe that Landslide was a child pornography host and Thomas Reedy was the king of child pornography. The truth is, Landslide wasn't a child pornography host at all, rather they had an automated system that allowed adult webmasters to link access to their websites via the Landslide payment systems. It  provided a cheap and easy means for adult webmasters to enter the commercial market by using his automated payment / access system. In return, Landslide would keep a share of the revenue.

Some 5,700 websites were believed to have used Landslide’s payment systems, a fraction of 1% of these were verified to contain child pornography at the time, the first of such sites using the Landslide payment system appearing late in 1998. Thomas Reedy had himself made two reports about illicit sites to the FBI, two FBI agents were called as defence witnesses at his trial, one from Philadelphia and one from Dallas, as well as obtaining legal advice to ensure that the company was not legally responsible for material that the webmasters provided.

Thomas Reedy was not the first to be stung by the FBI. US reporter Larry Matthews was conducting research into child porn for a three part radio show. He went into the child porn chat areas and came across something that disturbed him so he contacted the FBI. "Terrible things are happening out there, you've got to do something" he told them. They did, controversially when he carried on his research they arrested and charged him and he received an 18 month sentence. Prosecutors controversially argued that he could have obtained his information in different ways. "The government has taken the position the reporter could as easily have gotten the information he needed from the FBI," says Susan Goerring, executive director of the ACLU, Maryland. "We maintain that is an alarming position . . ., because once our freedom of the press hinges on what the government tells us and not the reporter, then we're all in trouble."

As a Dallas police officer had confirmed that child pornography could be paid for via the Landslide’s payment system, it is quite possible that the US LEA’s actually believed they were taking down the king of cp even though they knew the cp webmasters they were investigating were outside of the US. When they raided his offices, they did not find a child pornography enterprise, as this was not the function that Landslide performed. With assistance from security experts at Microsoft, they found what was there, a database of adult subscribers.

There are plenty of stories out there, but the official ones do not stand up to any examination. They described Landslide as if cp was an objective of the company, that there were servers all over the place in layers, the cp conspiracy. The Internet of course has servers everywhere, Thomas was king of his company, not king of cp or the Internet.

There was a vast amount of subscriber data, email addresses, credit card transactions and credit card details. The industry was rife with scam, and an independent investigation unit in the UK found fraud to have been in excess of 60% in relation to certain websites using Landslide. Reportedly twelve percent of the credit cards involved in Operation Ore had been reported stolen before the investigation started. Kent police reportedly found that 20% of those investigated were victims of identity fraud.

The prime scam on the Internet, is to incriminate the people defrauded to reduce the complaints, and this was the reason for the presence of extreme material on sites hooked into the Landslide and numerous other payment systems at the time. The extreme sites are just used as clearing sites for the bank robbery until the merchant account is closed down for excessive charge backs as happened at Landslide and numerous others. One of the few extreme sites was 'Nympho', the site that UK police officer Sharon Girling testified about in the trial of Thomas Reedy. The webmasters had a payout of $19.47 in their first month of trading at the end of March 1999. At the end of April, it was $95,428.94, simply impossible as the imagery was only of serious commercial interest to fraudsters and rogue law enforcement agencies. Of course, people who had paid for access to adult sites but had been whacked into blatantly illegal sites were in for quite a shock, even more so if Operation Ore came calling, though all the scammers had to do was to charge subscribers to these sites.

Thomas Reedy letter

The Letter

Terri Moore in her capacity as Assistant U.S. Attorney knew I was not guilty of the crime I was charged with but suppressed evidence, threatened five witnesses and knowingly used and solicited perjured testimony in order to win her case which resulted in me getting a 1335 year sentence, and she later used to promote herself as she ran for elected political office. Among her self serving lying quotes in her political campaign ads is: I put that smut peddler away for life. What she's not saying is instead of using the services we offered and allowing investigators to uncover future distributors and customers of child pornography she has effectively driven their activities underground and destroyed evidence that could have been used to convict them, allowing these criminals to continue their activities in neighborhoods around the world.

My company possessed the technology to track both those who wanted to distribute child pornography as well as those who wanted to view child pornography. It identified the person, where they lived, their interests, how many times they viewed child porn and when they viewed it

It is not as though we offered this help after the fact. I personally initiated contact with Frank B. Super of the FBI months before we were targeted, and offered our technical expertise while reporting child porn sites operating out of Indonesia and Russia.

We provided an access management solution for people who ran adult Web sites. Our services delivered a way for web masters to prevent children from accessing their adult content and make money at the same time. A lock on the door of these Web sites, if you will. We had over 6,400 Web sites around the world using our services and had been in operation for almost four years . We created the very first age verification service on the Internet.

We did not host or have control over those Web sites or their content. Each web-master was responsible for the location, creation and management of their web site. Customers were encouraged to report any illegal content to law enforcement as well as the Web sites' hosting Inter net service providers. When we reported these Web sites to the FBI we were told the web-master operating them were outside of their jurisdiction but that a new Federal task force in our area would be operational in the next 6-8 months and he, Frank Super, would put us in touch with this Dallas Web Task Force' as soon as they were up and running. This conversation and referral took place around November of 1998.

About March of 1999 we received a subpoena from FBI agent Donna Kibby of Philadelphia requesting information on a web-master in Russia. We complied with this court order, sending the requested information and had our attorney review our actions as well as write an accompanying letter.

I personally followed up with a phone call to agent Kibby. I once again offered any assistance they wished us to provide and relayed the prior conversation I had with Agent Frank Super back in November and his promised referral to the yet to be operational 'Dallas Web Task Force'. She asked if I had seen the web site named in the subpoena and I told her I had not, but my laptop was connected to the Internet and we could visit the web-site together, she on her computer and I on mine. We did this and the web-site, I noticed, had squares where the text normally would be. I told her the text could be Japanese or similar language as my web browser did not have updates necessary to recognize Japanese characters and would display the letters of the text in little blank squares. There were some images that appeared to be child pornography. She thanked me for my time and reiterate the instructions in the subpoena for us to not divulge the ongoing investigation to the web-master. I assured her that we would not. At trial she testified that she could not recall whether we visited the site together or if we ever discussed that the web site had child pornography , but her notes reflected that the letters in the text were little blank squares! She was not questioned about her notes by the defense as my attorney told me she would just say she was doodling!

Around this same time I created a banner exchange program and web site called ClicZ.com which allowed web-masters to promote their Web sites. I also included an 'Adult Classifieds' page to accompany it. These same web masters started using the banner exchange program. I deleted their banners and they kept signing back up again under different names. I then wrote programming that allowed viewers to help police the banners by deleting objectionable banners as they ran across them. This also failed to stop these banners from being displayed and I finally had to shut down & close the ClicZ.com banner exchange program. The adult classifieds also became full of ads posted by these sites pedophile customers. As with the Banners, after deleting inappropriate ads proved unsuccessful, after shutting down the banner exchange program which also promoted the adult classifieds page, I saved the adult classified page. The ads contained the advertisers email address and I felt it was good evidence the 'Dallas Web Task force' could use, as several ads were very disturbing and explicit. The act of saving these ads was purely an act of preservation NOT promotion as the server log files will show that almost no traffic existed on these pages after we closed down the banner exchange program. This too was not brought out in trial and this evidence consisting of the log files and special programming written for the banner exchange continues to exist in the prosecutors possession.

E-mail that we received from customers as well as web masters suggested the child pornography sites were having a hard time. They were not only being shut down by their hosting internet service providers but ongoing investigations, including INTERPOL, were now occurring and having an effect!!

These Web sites, approx. Twelve in all, were a mere 0.5% of the Web sites that used our services but they accounted for approx. 80% of our losses due to credit card fraud and abuse. Their abuse and our losses soared during the last three to four months of operation. I suspect they resorted to credit card fraud as they were having a harder time promoting their child porn.

Just a few months before we were to get to work with the 'Dallas Web Task Force' I received an e-mail stating sites in Indonesia and Russia, the same sites with child Porn, were trading stolen credit card numbers. They were using Stega Nography - the hiding of information inside of image files, to share and trade these stolen numbers among themselves. They certainly appeared to be using these numbers to boost their site revenue through our service, thus defrauding us of tens of thousands of dollars a month. The images that held these numbers were being posted in a news group, allowing web masters to swap the stolen card numbers back and forth from Russia (who was suspected of selling these numbers), and Indonesia anomalously, in an untraceable manner. I downloaded a representative sample hoping to find an example of this. If I could find an example and discover what format they were using to hide the numbers I could write a program that would filter the card numbers and block them from being used on our system. I had experienced a similar case of fraud months back from a web-site operated out of Pakistan. In that case they were using card numbers that originated from a single bank in India. This web-master was stopped after he ran fourteen thousand dollars in fraudulent charges in a single month. The only way to prevent this web-master from creating a new site and/or signing up again under a different name was to ban the entire country of Pakistan from using our system, which we did. Original programming in the prosecutions possession continues to reflect this but was not presented at trial. We call our merchant account provider that processed our credit cards, Visa International as well as U.S. Customs and could not get anyone to help prosecute this individual or even investigate. So we knew from experience that we were basically on our own in preventing such fraud. U.S. Customs claimed that since each individual charge was less the fifty dollars they would not be willing to pursue an investigation.

I found out a trial by way of government testimony that I was close to finding the example I was looking for in the images the representative sample I had downloaded were from the same series of images that the Indonesians were showing on their web site as viewed by investigators. My computer was seized by agents before I had the chance to review the internal code of these files for hidden card numbers.

Speaking of the trial, here is where I was awe struck by the actions of the prosecution and Government agents. This malicious attack knew no bounds ethically or legally and certainly was not concerned with revealing the truth. To the contrary. As you will see the Prosecutor did everything in their power to cover up, suppress and manipulate the truth to win this case.

The morning of September 8th, 1999 at around 10 a.m. there was a knock on my door at home. The FBI Agent there stated that there was a warrant to search both the house and the business offices and that he was there to take me to the office where the first warrant was being executed. This agent trailed me through the house and watched as I got dressed, never showing me a warrant. When we arrived at the office there were over 50 agents from the FBI, U.S. Customs, the secret Service, the U.S. Postal Service and the 'Dallas Web Task Force'. I was floored and in shock! They had gathered my employees in a room of the office and were interrogating them one at a time in different rooms. Investigators took control of the phones while others boxing up business records and computers. None of us were allowed to leave nor was anyone read their rights. I was taken into a room and questioned by a U.S. Postal Inspector and a member of the 'Dallas Web Task Force' was taking notes.

I couldn't believe what was happening. I told them about my contact with Frank Super and expressed my surprise that the 'Dallas Web Task Force' was targeting us. I explain, it must be some kind of mistake, that were waiting to get to work with them. After what seemed like thirty minutes of candid conversation I came to the realization that we were indeed the target regardless of circumstances. I ended the conversation by requesting to call an attorney. I was escorted to the designated holding area with my employees after I made an attorney call. We were not allowed to leave this room, even to go outside and smoke. We were constantly under guard. The task force ordered Pizza and fed everyone. Around 3:00 P.M. I asked to go out and smoke and was refused. Then I accidentally found the magic words. I asked: 'Are being detained' If so why'' The secret service agent then went and brought back the U.S. Postal Inspector to answer my question who stated: 'No, you are not being detained'. I then loudly informed my employees: 'He just said we are not being detained'. 'Everyone is free to go'. Most of the employees did go home at this time. Only then were we allowed to leave or even go outside to smoke'

During this time they loaded our computer Web Servers into a van cutting off our business. Remember only 0.5% of the web sites were suspected of having illegal content. Instead of identifying and shutting down the sites in question they disabled the entire system preventing the legal operation of the other 6,390 or so sites, thus denying us and thousand of others the right to legitimate income. They also seized car titles and anything else that could have generated income, including putting a freeze on the bank accounts. This obviously was a hindrance to retaining legal counsel for a defense.

I must point out that when they disable and removed the system they failed to preserve the evidence of the other 6,390 or so sites and at the same time destroyed the opportunity for us to preserve evidence showing these sites had unquestionably legal content. This would have prevented the Prosecution from later claiming the entire KeyZ.com systems proceeds were derived from illegal contact at sentencing despite their offering no factual evidence to back up this claim, thus increasing my sentence to life!

We only had contacts with civil attorneys at this time. I had spent tens of thousands of dollars with our attorneys months before the raid. They went over our business with a fine tooth comb, reviewing user agreements, 'The Child Online Protection Act' in which our business was based as an age verification service, as well as reviewing our entire business mode. These review were conducted to prepare our company for public offering on the stock Exchange. I am confident that if these attorneys ever thought we were not operating in a legal fashion they would have been duty bound to tell us. Nor would they have continued to work on taking our business public.

The day of the raid when I asked to call an attorney I called Alex McGeoch, the attorney that was coordinating these efforts to go public, who referred me to Reid Prospere, a criminal attorney in Dallas. This attorney set up a meeting with the Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Moore, and myself. Once more I attempted to explain my contact with frank Super and offer my assistance, that were the good guys and not the criminals. It was made clear that her intentions were to prosecute, refusing our offers of assistance.

Reid Prospere wanted to work a plea deal. I couldn't believe this! He didn't even attempt to review any evidence. I fired him and once again called Alex McGeoch who referred me to Jay Ethington & Tom Mills of Dallas. Finally someone who would listen to us! They were confident we could prove our case. In fact they thought there was a chance it would never go to trial. It was too good to be true as they wanted two million dollars for their services. The government already had frozen the business assets and shut down our income source. Taking the advice of an attorney friend we finally hired Wes Ball of Arlington to represent Landslide, inc. (The business) and myself for $50,000.

While we were lawyer hopping, the Prosecution was busy serving subpoenas to our now 'ex' employees. Most of our employees were still supportive, the lines of communication still open between us. Everyone was hoping this could still be resolved and we could go back into operation.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Moore gave each employee a choice. Either interview with her or follow the subpoena and be brought before the Grand Jury. They all chose the interview. After Jessica Baldwin, David Cruz and Dustin VanHuss, (key employees) met with Terry Moore, they wouldn't return phone calls or even allow our attorney to interview them. Their actions were totally out of character and gave the impression they were threatened. It was rumoured that they were threatened with prosecution if they had any further conduct with us.

I told Wes Ball to subpoena those employees. They were the ones who knew we turned those web sites in to FBI agent Super and he promised the referral to the 'Dallas Web Task Force' when they became operational. Wes Ball never did. They were never interviewed by the defense nor did they testify for the prosecution at trial' Also, the interview notes tendered to the Defence from the prosecution selectively left out any reference to my contact with Frank Super or the 'Dallas Web Task Force' referral. They all told me they mentioned these to investigators when interviewed at the time of the raid. Their statements selectively edited and facts suppressed!

With the help of my father-in-Law we also hired Mike Heischel at the request of Wes Ball to represent my wife. Mr. Heischel was chosen specifically because he was on a list of attorneys that could not try cases before Judge McBride, the Judge chosen to hear our case. I was told by Wes Ball that this Judge was bad. I later found out that Judge McBride tends to attack both prosecution and defense attorneys who are ill prepared to try their cases and does not allow impropriety in his courtroom. I now wish we had kept Judge McBride.

Prosecutor Terry Moore knowingly solicited, and our attorneys allowed, false testimony from FBI agent Frank Super, who testified that he investigated our company for a complaint of child pornography on a web site named 'Children of God' in August of 1997. He did not merely get the date and year wrong because he dates his testimony in several places by stating he was a fresh young agent 3 months out of Quantico. He also testifies that he failed to locate documentation of this alleged investigation of this alleged complaint. Lease records of the building he claimed to visit prove we did not occupy the building at any time in 1997. Employment records of the Landslide, Inc. employees he claimed to have talked to prove she did not work for us until June of 1998! And, database records of the site 'Children of God', an Indonesian site, prove it was not even in existence until the latter part of 1998, the time I called and turned them in!

Although Super testifies that I never called and turned in any site, denies he referred us to the 'Dallas Web Task Force', it is obvious that his 1997 claim is false not to mention the fact that there is no documentation of its not ending in an arrest. The Prosecutor, Terry Moore, knew this 'investigation' was false but she used it to create the financial time line at sentencing to enhance my sentence to life! What's most perplexing is why it was never attacked and rebutted by the Defense. Frank supers name and direct line number was on a sticky note a the left hand side of my computer monitor when the search warrant was executed. I had it close so I could follow up on his promised referral so we could finally take these sites out. Wes Ball stated he looked but did not find it in the boxes of evidence seized. I know it was part of the papers seized. Nor was FBI agent Ullman questioned about its existence at or before trial. FBI agent Ullman was the agent who took custody of the documents on my desk. He was also the agent who spent eight hours on my home computer, viewing & manipulating files without first preserving a copy of the hard drive to ensure uncontaminated evidence.

The various agents and investigators under the supervision of prosecutor Terry Moore, saved selective bits of evidence and presented partial facts at trial. By saving 'video snapshots' of the Web sites and not saving the complete coded pages at the server level they introduced only partial evidence while destroying or allowing to be destroyed evidence that would have been beneficial to the defense. There was not a single bit of evidence that was presented to the jury related to the Web sites that was an original. In fact much of the evidence presented was a copy of a copy. Not preserving originals in their entirety was a malicious wilful act that denied the defense the ability to attack their partial evidence with the full story. This was not raised on our appeal.

The prosecution denied our defense the right to full access of what originals they did have in their possession. I repeatedly told Les Ball that we needed access to the creation dates of several files in order to reconstruct timeliness that conflict with prosecution testimony and assertions. These creation dates and other relevant information withheld are still in the prosecutions possession.

During their investigation Steve Nelson of the 'Dallas Web Task force' video taped the foreign Web sites. The clarity of text was so poor that one is unable to read the web addresses of the Web sites and the destinations of links or images for identification purposes. They also do not show the underlying html (programming code) or other relevant information. Knowing this he went back and claimed to use a program called Web Buddy that captures a site as a viewer sees it and writes it to the viewers computer hard drive for viewing off-line. This too is flawed in that it does not capture any server side code that may have been executed on the Web sites computer prior to being viewed. Without the original Server-side Html files it is impossible to determine where the images really came from or if the web-site is selectively showing illegal content to persons not affiliated with landslide. It also over writes the original viewed code to reflect the new hard drive placement of files. All of these files were later hand-manipulated and doctored to transfer then to a C.D. The greatest flaw besides not preserving the original intact is that anyone can create a 'Web-Buddy' CD of the site of their choice and manipulate it as desired to show, for example the Department of Justice Web site advertising a sale of Authentic J. Edgar Hoover silk panties.

How can something that can be so totally and fictitiously created be presented as original direct evidence' Be very afraid because if the government is allowed to get away with this and use it as their sole supporting evidence then nobody is safe!

We were charged with conspiracy/aiding & abetting the distribution of child pornography. Eighty nine counts originally. The Appeals court has since thrown out 77 counts as being multiplicatus. With the twelve remaining counts my 1335 years sentence was reduced to life in prison without parole (180 years). 15 years on each count forced to run consecutively. Instead of being charged one count for each image the appeals court ruled I should charged with one count per web site. Previously we had 43 counts of 2252 distribution and 43 counts of 2252 A distribution, the difference is: one is for virtual creations that appear to be an image of a child and the other is if we had knowledge that images were not virtual creations but that real children were involved.

The Supreme Court ruled that the law for virtual child porn was over broad and unconstitutional (2252 A). The Appeals court threw out the 2252 A counts.

At trial the prosecution failed to prove or even suggest that even the web masters had knowledge that the images were of real children. They certainly did not present evidence that we had knowledge of how the images were created! The very fact that the government charged us under both laws shows even the government did not know! For without intimate knowledge of the creation of an image, no one can be certain whether the persons depicted in an image are real or not. One simply has to watch TV to see examples of such image manipulations.

So, not withstanding the fact that; we contacted the FBI and turned in the known illegal sites, were eagerly preparing to assist in an investigation to convict child porn distributors and their customers who were costing us big bucks trying to come up with solutions to keep them out of our service business, complying with a court order, not interfering with known ongoing investigations, directing customers to turn in web sites suspected of distributing illegal content, relying in good faith on the advice of legal counsel, these charges and our convictions stand, and my wife and I sit in prison.

I am looking for assistance to overturn this illegal conviction to be compensated for the destruction of our family, our business documented to be worth ten million dollars, to recover the $1.2 million dollars in seized assets and hopefully get on with our lives.

Yes, I would still love to be a party to tracking down and legally convicting those responsible for preying on innocent children. In fact, I have a deep desire to see the owners of the web-sites that distributed child porn brought to justice. But I would also like to assist those who find themselves wrongfully targeted and charged with computer crimes. I fear this is the new witch hunt of our times!

Thomas
Dallas, Texas
U.S.A.