A diver has been jailed after swapping extreme images of child abuse over the internet under the alias of Scuba77.
Colin Lee was arrested in a dawn raid which was part of a nationwide police investigation based on information uncovered by the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.
Police found so many images on his three computers they stopped counting when they reached 2,000, Exeter Crown Court was told.
E-mail and internet records on his computer showed he had been sending some of the most extreme images on the internet to a file sharing website where they were viewed by fellow paedophiles.
He distributed 775 still images and 30 movies.
Lee is a keen amateur diver who blamed his fascination with the images on the traumatic psychological effects of a drowning accident nine years earlier in which he lost a friend and was blamed by some fellow divers for the death.
Fork lift truck instructor Lee, aged 36, of Culme Way, Dunkeswell, admitted ten offences of distributing indecent images of children and 23 of making or possessing images.
He was jailed for two years by Judge Phillip Wassall after he heard that a total of 75,000 images and 4,200 movies were found on Lees computers.
He told Lee:I give these examples not to shock but to give an illustration of what the court is dealing with. Im afraid these offences are so serious that only immediate custody is justified.
People who distribute these images must know, and the message must go out, that if they do so they will receive a prison sentence.
Mr Gordon Richings, prosecuting, said police were tipped off about Lees internet activity after an investigation by the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children and his home was raided at 4 am to make sure he was at home.
He said Lee distributed images by e-mail and through a file sharing website and was traced through a hotmail address in the name of Scuba77. He was born in 1977.
Mr Nick Bradley, defending, said Lee has enrolled on a course with the Lucy Faithfull Foundation to address his interest in child abuse images and lost his job as a result of his arrest.
He said:He has issues with his mental health relating to an incident when he was 27. He is a keen diver and was involved in an expedition in which a friend drowned and died.
He was not responsible for his death but was the handler of the boat and there was talk that he was in some way instrumental in causing the fatality and this became a burden on him.
Mr Bradley said Lee was not distributing material for gain but was encouraged to do so by fellow users of the file sharing website who allowed him greater access to their images as a result.
