Police say two New Zealand boys have been caught up in an American-based child pornography website.
United States officials say they've arrested and charged 14 suspects, in relation to the website, which operated for about a year until June last year.
Officials say the 250 victims, aged from 10 to 17, were mainly from America; 23 came from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Belgium and Britain. All have been identified and contacted.
The site which operated out of Louisiana had 27,000 subscribers.
The administrator of the website Jonathan Johnson, 27, has been arrested, and if convicted could spend 20 years behind bars in what US officials are calling one of the largest known online child exploitation operations in history.
Fourteen suspects linked to a hidden website have been arrested.
Detective senior sergeant John Michael of New Zealand Police's online child exploitation unit (OCEANZ) says it first received information from American officials about the website last year.
He says based on the information from the United States they were able to identify two of the victims, who were both New Zealand boys in their early teenage years.
Mr Michael says it deals with similar cases on an almost daily basis, with children engaging online with webcams or sending images - putting them at risk.
National director of End Child Prostitution, Pornography And Trafficking (ECPAT) Alan Bell says images involving children are in heavy demand. He says as long as there is demand, more victims will be found.
Mr Bell says a Department of Internal Affairs database of some illegal child sex abuse websites reveals more than one million attempts are made to access them by New Zealanders every month.
He says the pictures are traded or sold just like a commodity.
US authorities say at the time it was dismantled, the illegal website contained more than 2000 shared webcam-captured videos of children enticed to produce sexually explicit material.
