AN ORMISTON man has been remanded in custody after police allegedly uncovered child exploitation material during a raid.
Detectives from the Queensland Police Service’s Argos unit executed a search warrant at an Ormiston address on October 1 as part of an investigation into the alleged possession and distribution of child exploitation material.
Police allege numerous electronic storage devices were located.
It will further be alleged the 46-year-old man possessed material depicting the sexual abuse of children and was active in several online child abuse networks.
Argos is the QPS unit responsible for investigating organised child exploitation, including technology-facilitated offending.
Its detectives proactively and reactively target websites and mobile applications allegedly used to exploit children, while working with national and international law-enforcement agencies to identify children at risk and disrupt online offending.
In its latest annual report, QPS said Argos investigators helped identify 319 children in circumstances of sexual harm nationally and internationally during 2024-25, arrested 68 alleged offenders on 436 criminal charges, and referred 513 cases to other law-enforcement agencies.
In separate high-profile Australian cases, AFP-led Operation Arkstone uncovered a domestic online network after police examined a phone seized during the arrest of a Wyong man in 2020.
The AFP says the investigation ultimately led to 26 arrests nationally, 1359 charges and the identification of 56 victims, with police alleging some network members produced material while others accessed and circulated it.
Another major case involved former childcare worker Ashley Paul Griffith, who was arrested in 2022 after investigators linked child abuse material uploaded to a dark-web forum to a Brisbane childcare centre.
Griffith was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2024, with a 27-year non-parole period, after pleading guilty to 307 offences, including child exploitation offences.
The Ormiston man has been charged with 99 offences, including possessing child abuse material, administering a child exploitation material website, using a carriage service to distribute child abuse material and other offences.
He appeared in Brisbane Magistrates Court on October 2 and was remanded in custody until October 16.
