An investigation in the child luring of a 14 year old girl in Surrey, B.C., allegedly by a man from Oregon in the United States, has led to the identification of more victims.

RCMP say the Surrey Detachment and U.S. Department of Homeland Security worked jointly to affect the arrest of 35 year old Kevin McCarty in California almost two weeks ago on November 18th.

Police say McCarty, who used an alias, allegedly contacted and communicated with the 14 year old this past September, on social media. He is accused of grooming the teen for sexual purpose and coercing the girl to create and distribute self-exploitive sexual material.

McCarty is now facing charges in the United States of sexual exploitation of children, distribution of child pornography, cyberstalking, online enticement of a minor, and transferring obscene material to a minor.

However, RCMP say one of the most important outcomes is that the images and videos shared in this investigation are now part of Project Arachnid.

Corporal Danielle Pollock of the Surrey RCMP Internet Child Exploitation Unit says Project Arachnid helps break the cycle of the distribution of these images which can help address victims’ fears that someone they know may come across their image on the internet.

Operated by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection , Project Arachnid discovers Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) by crawling URLs. The platform determines that a particular URL contains CSAM by comparing the media displayed on the URL to a database of known signatures that have been assessed by analysts as CSAM. If CSAM is detected, a notice is sent to the hosting provider requesting its removal.

Processing tens of thousands of images per second, Project Arachnid is currently detecting over 100,000 unique images per month that require analyst assessment, and this number has been increasing each month.