Richard Huckle jailed for life after Queensland Police operation targeting online paedophiles.

By the National Reporting Team’s Mark Solomons.

A British man described as the UK’s worst paedophile has been jailed for life at the Old Bailey in London after being identified by Queensland-based child protection detectives.

Photographer Richard Huckle, 30, was given 22 life sentences for a string of offences against dozens of babies and young children, mostly in Malaysia, where he talked his way into orphanages and shelters while posing as an English teacher in order to find victims.

He was identified by Queensland Police’s Taskforce Argos child protection unit during an operation targeting the encrypted part of the internet known as the Dark Web.

Brisbane-based investigators secretly took control of a website called The Love Zone in 2014 and identified several hundred offenders across the world, including Huckle.

Argos provided information about Huckle to detectives from the UK’s National Crime Agency and he was arrested at Gatwick Airport shortly afterwards.

He had more than 20,000 indecent images in his possession.

The paedophile admitted 71 serious offences including 14 rapes and 31 sexual assaults.

British law allows offenders to be prosecuted for crimes against children overseas.

Australian site administrator jailed for 35 years

The Love Zone’s chief administrator was identified as Adelaide childcare worker Shannon McCoole, who in August was jailed for 35 years for sex offences against children, and the scandal prompted a royal commission into the state’s child protection mechanisms.

McCoole controlled membership of The Love Zone closely and members were required to post fresh child exploitation material regularly or face expulsion.

The head of Taskforce Argos, Detective Inspector Jon Rouse, told the ABC detectives had identified Huckle as a member of the site’s “VIP” area, where users discussed their sexual preferences.

“He had a very specific interest in more Indian-looking children and was a prolific producer,” Detective Inspector Rouse said.

Detective Inspector Rouse said Huckle had joined the sites in 2013 and had uploaded between 20 and 30 megabytes of new images to it each month.

“We analysed the material to the point of seeing contact offending taking place and getting an idea of where it was taking place,” he said.

Detective Inspector Rouse said in addition to McCoole, eight other senior members or “key administrators” of the site were arrested during part of the operation, four in the US and one each in Brazil, the Netherlands, Denmark and Spain.

“A lot of them were taken down while [we] were engaging them online,” he said.

“That’s the best practice but not always the easiest operationally.”

Offending continues on Dark Web

The Love Zone had more than 45,000 members globally when police closed it down.

Detective Inspector Rouse said despite high-profile successes by police targeting the Dark Web and the popular encrypted portal called The Onion Router (TOR), they were still home to many groups of paedophiles communicating via online bulletin boards.

“There are significant boards on TOR,” he said.

“It’s not modified the offending. It’s the nature of the beast.”

This post originally appeared on ABC News.