Four men have been jailed in Bahrain after duping British boys into sending them indecent images of themselves, police say.
The men were charged with a range of offences including the sexual assault of children, forcing children by threats and blackmail to obscene acts and publishing and circulating audiovisual recordings of children.
A National Crime Agency (NCA) spokesman said investigations began in January 2012 when a boy's parent contacted Surrey Police with concerns about his contact with a person claiming to be a 13-year-old girl from Rome. The victim had initially been contacted via BlackBerry Messenger and following conversations online was encouraged to perform sexual acts via a webcam.
Further inquiries by the force's paedophile online investigation team identified a total of 37 victims in Surrey and elsewhere in the UK, and that the accounts being used by the suspect were in fact being accessed in Bahrain.
Surrey Police then contacted the NCA's Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) command, which went on to identify other offenders.
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Officers found that the group had enticed their victims - to date all boys - by pretending to be girls sending indecent images of themselves, and then requesting indecent images in return.
The offenders - aged between 19 and 21 at the time - would then threaten to post the victims' images on internet sites or send them to friends and family unless more images were sent.
The evidence gathered was used to support authorities in Bahrain in their successful prosecution of the perpetrators.
To date, action has been taken to safeguard 249 children targeted by these offenders, though investigations suggest they sought to abuse many others in the UK and around the world.
