When FBI agents arrived outside William Spearman's home in the quiet suburb of Madison, Alabama, in November 2022, they were prepared for danger.
Their search warrant was so important to the bureau that it was approved by the FBI director himself. When the agents breached Spearman's door with tactical explosives, Spearman fought back, tussling with the agents as three of his handguns remained barely out of reach. The FBI managed to handcuff and arrest Spearman, a high-value arrest, in what a top Justice Department official called "one of the most successful" prosecutions of its kind.
Spearman went by the nickname "Boss" and was labeled by the Justice Department as "one of the most significant" purveyors of child sex abuse material in the world. His arrest in 2022, his guilty plea a year later and his eventual life sentence were part of an unprecedented takedown of a prodigious child abuse network.
Spearman is one of at least 18 people convicted so far of leading and utilizing the dark web to share hundreds of thousands of unlawful sexually exploitative images of children. The Justice Department calls the investigation and prosecutions Operation Grayskull; it helped secure those arrests and shutter four heavily trafficked dark web sites where violent and horrific images of child sexual abuse were traded and housed.
The Operation Grayskull investigation launched in 2020, when law enforcement agents noticed a spike in traffic to a dark web site suspected of hosting child abuse material. The dark web child abuse sites eventually attracted more than 120,000 members, millions of files and at least 100,000 visits in a single day, according to an FBI official who spoke with CBS News.
"Even for prosecutors, it is difficult to understand how pervasive this is," said Matthew Galeotti, head of the Justice Department Criminal Division.
"Because it happens on the dark web, people aren't aware of it. It's extremely troubling," he told CBS News.
Spearman's case has parallels to many of the others unearthed by Operation Grayskull. Spearman was accused of helping lead a dark web site with thousands of users and members. A sentencing memo submitted to the court said it was "no wonder" that he had tried to resist the FBI, rather than surrendering.
"The devices at his desk contained massive quantities of evidence proving that he was the lead administrator of Website A," the memo said. "Unsurprisingly, the defendant's devices also contained an enormous collection of images and videos depicting the rape and abuse of children."
Selwyn Rosenstein was sentenced to 28 years in prison in 2022, for operating a dark website for unlawful exploitative images. Prosecutors said the platform "was not simply a website; it was a large, active community of pedophiles and (abuse material) enthusiasts. And it existed in part because of the Defendant's criminal acts."
Rosenstein possessed such a large quantity of abusive images, he needed to store some on a server he used to run his business, according to the Justice Department.
Speaking from a second floor conference room at Justice Department headquarters in Washington last week, Galeotti told CBS News the members of these dark web child abuse sites often "earn" membership by paying a fee, "helping moderate the site" or contributing child abuse images or material.
Galeotti said, "We luckily have very sophisticated prosecutors and agents who work specifically on this kind of thing. These are people who have a more of a technical understanding."
"The defendants in this case, as sadistic as they may be, are somewhat sophisticated," and make use of encryption, he added.
Operation Grayskull also secured the conviction of Matthew Garrell of Raleigh, North Carolina, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for operating on a dark web site for abuse material.
"Garrell engaged in an extremely complex and technologically sophisticated conspiracy that far exceeds the typical child-exploitation offenses," prosecutors said.
They argued in a court filing that Garrell possessed a predator's "handbook," with "detailed instructions" for grooming children for future abuse.
The takedown of dark web leaders and users also included the convictions of men from Virginia, Maryland, Indiana, Texas, Washington, Arkansas, Michigan and Oklahoma.
"They were part of an online community of hundreds of thousands of people, with leadership roles rules and a common dedicated purpose" said Chris Delzotto, an acting FBI deputy assistant director. Delzotto told CBS News, "Few people would have envisioned how (child abuse materials) would permeate the internet, the way it has today."
The federal investigation which uncovered and shuttered the first dark web site, also led to the closure of three others. Abbigail Beccaccio, an FBI unit chief, told CBS News. "The leadership team that operated one of the sites also operated several of the others."
The Justice Department is touting the shutdown of those sites as a victory to help deter future abuse or production of unlawful images. "This is one of the most successful of all time," Galeotti said. "We dismantled four websites that have not regenerated."
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Scott MacFarlane