From 2001 to 2004, LS Studio, also known as Ukrainian Angels Studio, made a number of photo collections of underage girls. One of these was LS Land Magazine. Before Ukrainian police raided and shut down the site, LS Studio was the most popular site for child pornography in the world.
Aside from LS Land, there were also the LS Island, LS Dreams, LS Stars, LS Barbie, and LS Fantasy collections. Girls between the ages of 8 and 16 were hired by the studio through TV and newspaper ads. The studio, which mostly worked in Kharkov, Kiev, and Simferopol, tricked the parents of the kids by pretending to be a real modelling agency. Then, photographers took pictures of the kids in clothes that were made just for them, when they were naked, and in suggestive poses. About 1,500 children under the age of 18 were involved.
After a joint investigation with Interpol, the raid took place in July 2004. It was done by the Crime Investigation Department of the Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior. The police took away computers, video equipment, pictures of the children, and documents about money. There were hundreds of thousands of dollars in the agency’s bank accounts that had to be frozen. In 2005, the U.S. Department of State released a report that said a lot of child pornography on the Internet came from Ukraine.
