A cross-border investigation by open-source researchers and regional journalists has tracked the alleged operator of a large “revenge porn” website from court filings in the United States to a residential address in New Zealand, underscoring the global reach of nonconsensual sexual-image networks and the challenges of enforcing accountability online.
Open-source sleuthing links continents
The World from PRX interviewed key members of the reporting team behind the project: Bellingcat investigator Kolina Koltai, based in Seattle, and Michael Wright, a reporter for The Press in Christchurch, New Zealand. The reporting, which the program characterized as tracing the “alleged owner” of the website, combined document review and cross-border reporting to follow leads across jurisdictions.
The investigation, which the program said moved “from a court case in the US to a family home in New Zealand,” highlights how material posted on one country’s servers or platforms can be tied to individuals living halfway around the world through careful open-source and archival research.
“The World’s Host Marco Werman spoke to Bellingcat investigator Kolina Koltai, based in Seattle, and Michael Wright, a reporter with The Press, based in Christchurch, New Zealand.”
Scope, sensitivities and public-interest questions
The reporting touches on sensitive subject matter. Producers included a content advisory noting the story contains references to nonconsensual sexual content and child sexual abuse material. The advisory signals the nature of the evidence and testimony investigators and reporters encountered while tracing the website’s reach.
While the details of the alleged site operator and any legal proceedings are handled by the reporting organizations, the investigation raises several broader questions for policy makers, platforms and law enforcement:
- Jurisdictional barriers: How can prosecutors coordinate across borders when alleged operators and victims are in different countries?
- Platform responsibilities: What obligations do hosting services and social platforms have to remove nonconsensual material and assist in identifying its provenance?
- Victim support and redress: What legal and practical remedies are available to people whose intimate images are shared without consent?
What the investigation shows about methods
The joint work by an open-source investigative group and a traditional newspaper illustrates a model increasingly used in complex digital investigations: combining forensic digital techniques, public records and on-the-ground reporting. Bellingcat, known for its use of geolocation and digital footprint analysis, partnered with a regional newsroom that could pursue local reporting and verification in New Zealand.
That cooperation allowed the team to follow documentary leads from a U.S. case to sources in New Zealand, demonstrating how disparate threads — court documents, archived web pages, publicly available registration data and in-person reporting — can converge to produce a cross-border narrative about an online operation.
| Role | Location |
|---|---|
| Bellingcat investigator (Kolina Koltai) | Seattle, United States |
| The Press reporter (Michael Wright) | Christchurch, New Zealand |
The investigation underscores the difficulty of policing content that crosses national boundaries and the complementary role that investigative journalism can play alongside law enforcement. Where criminal statutes and civil remedies vary widely, cross-border reporting can surface leads that spur legal and regulatory follow-up.
Listeners and readers can access the full interview and reporting through The World from PRX and the publishing outlets involved to review the documented evidence and the reporting methods used by the team.
As cases involving nonconsensual intimate imagery proliferate online, the collaborative model deployed in this investigation may become an increasingly important tool for exposing operators and prompting policy responses that address both prevention and remediation.
