Man called largest child porn ‘facilitator’ pleads guilty

GREENBELT — A man once described by an FBI agent as the world’s largest “facilitator” of child pornography websites pleaded guilty Thursday to operating a web hosting service that allowed users to anonymously access hundreds of thousands of images and videos depicting the rape and torture of infants and older children.

Eric Eoin Marques, 34, faces a mandatory minimum of 15 years in prison and a maximum of 30 years after his guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to advertise child pornography. A plea agreement will ask U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland to sentence Marques to 15 to 21 years in prison, but the judge is not bound by the recommendation.

Marques can withdraw his guilty plea if the judge departs from that recommended range. Chuang is scheduled to sentence Marques on May 11.

Marques, who spent years fighting his extradition from Ireland to the U.S., operated a web hosting service on the darknet that allowed thousands of users to view and share child pornography, according to a court filing Thursday.

Marques, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Ireland, has remained in custody since his August 2013 arrest in Dublin after an extradition request from the U.S. He was living in Ireland at the time of the alleged offenses. The server that he allegedly used was in France...

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