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Ashcroft announced the end to the largest known child pornography enterprise on Wednesday

By Kelli Arena
CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Federal officials -- having in the past year busted the largest commercial child pornography enterprise in the history of the United States -- said Wednesday they are now actively going after the operation's customers.

Kenneth Weaver, head of the Postal Inspection Service, said that based on records from Landslide Inc., federal agents have conducted 144 searches in 37 states, and have made more than 100 arrests in the past year.

"We expect dozens more arrests to occur over the next several months," said Postal Inspector Raymond Smith.

The arrest have been on charges of ordering child pornography, a felony under federal law.

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"Those who created the demand for this child pornography -- the consumer or user of child pornography -- is no less responsible for sexual exploitation of children than is the producer or distributor," said Weaver. "It has been our experience that many of the consumers are also child molesters."

One postal inspection official said that of 1,022 violators of child porn laws since 1997, 368 had been determined to be child molesters.

Postal inspectors worked with 30 federally funded task forces to target "some of the most egregious offenders from intelligence gained through this investigation, Weaver said.

In the operation, undercover agents contacted people who had been customers of Landslide and offered to sell them child pornography.

After the pornography was delivered to a customer, law enforcement agents moved in to make arrest.

The announcement follows the sentencing Monday of a Fort Worth, Texas, couple, Thomas and Janice Reedy, who were convicted last December on 89 counts of sexual exploitation of minors, distribution of child porn, and related charges.

Federal authorities said the Reedys had 250,000 subscribers to their Landslide child porn Web site. They said records showed the site took in $1.4 million in a one-month period.

The Reedys' company admitted customers, who paid by credit card, into Web pages containing graphic pictures and videos of children engaged in sexual acts with each other and with adults.

Thomas Reedy was sentenced to more than 1,000 years in prison. His wife was sentenced to 14 years.

The sites were run by five Web masters in Russia and Indonesia. Warrants have been issued for their arrests.

Attorney General John Ashcroft that the "Operation Avalanche," the name of the investigation, showed that children were running into sex offenders in the "back allies and dark corners of the Internet."

He said law enforcement officials had been "outgunned and out-teched" in the past but were now catching up and cracking down on "cyber enticement offenses."