He trained and worked as a nurse, but, understanding the financial possibilities of the Internet, he set up an adult pornography website that provided a comfortable income.
[6] In 1998, Thomas Reedy recognized systematic fraud in streams of different credit cards being signed up in batches from the same internet address to the same website.
Adams had received a tip from Ronnie Miller, an acquaintance in Saint Paul, Minnesota[citation needed] who provided information about a website advertising child pornography.
[citation needed] In early 1999, the United States Postal Inspection Service engaged the Dallas Police Department to further investigate whether the image from Indonesia could be prosecuted.
[9] The court transcriptions from the case against Landslide Productions revealed that the Dallas Police Department had formed a relationship with Microsoft Corporation after the software maker had encouraged its technical employees to volunteer their time to better the community in which they lived.
Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) and Dallas police presented their findings to Terri Moore, an Assistant District Attorney in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, and received warrants to search the Landslide business offices and the Reedy home.
[11] In January 2000, Thomas Reedy was convicted of trafficking in child pornography through testimony from witnesses, including Sharon Girling, a UK police officer at SOCA/NCS.
The Reedy case led to the creation of a nationwide network of 30 federally funded task forces to fight Internet crimes against children.
Initial results of the operation seemed positive, as the gateway site and payment system were closed down and thousands of possible users of child pornography websites were identified for later investigation.
Law in the UK allows conviction on the basis of incitement to distribute indecent images; as such, the mere presence on the database, regardless of the legality of the sites paid for, was sufficient to warrant prosecution.
In 2005 and 2007, UK investigative journalist Duncan Campbell wrote a series of articles criticizing police forensic procedures and trial evidence.
After obtaining copies of the Landslide hard drives, Campbell publicly identified evidence of massive credit card fraud, including thousands of charges where there was no access to any porn site at all.
"[14] Campbell's articles also indicated that sworn statements provided by Dallas detective Steve Nelson and US postal inspector Michael Mead were false.