A father-of-three, who set out to create the largest collection of pornography on the Internet, has been jailed for three years.

Andrew Croft, 30, earned thousands of pounds from his trade, using a computer at the lawyers' office where he worked. He amassed 7,000 obscene images of children and a further 100,000 adult porn pictures.

Croft, an information technology manager of Tudor House, Radley Road, Abingdon, offered the pictures for sale on various websites and also advertised in Internet chat rooms. In the six months from the start of the police investigation in March 1999, nearly 30,000 passed through an off-shore account in Jersey in Croft's name.

Also stored on the laptop computer was a collection of 7,000 images of naked children, some as young as three, which were not for sale but which he traded with other perverts for new pictures. In addition to the websites, Croft also ran a mail order business, sending out pornographic images on computer CD-ROMs and obscene videos.

Croft was caught after his employers, an Ipswich firm of solicitors, found the pornography stored on a computer he used for his job.

Croft admitted nine offences under the Obscene Publications Act, 12 counts of possessing indecent photographs with intent to distribute them and two offences of placing advertisements in chat rooms to publicise his sites.

Passing sentence at Ipswich Crown Court, Judge John Devaux told him he had encouraged others to exploit and abuse children for commercial aims.

The judge added: "You are a man of good character who is being described as a caring family man and I am sure that's right. I am unable to say what profit you made. You may or may not be a paedophile yourself. "You told probation officers your motivation was to create the biggest site with the largest number of images. You displayed little concern about the harm suffered by these victims."

In mitigation, Sharon Leene said Croft was a family man, with two young daughters and a baby boy, and that he had amassed the porn as a hobby, not for profit.

Police were called in by Birketts Solicitors in March last year after another employee alerted the company.

Croft's laptop was impound- ed by police and he was suspended from, and later lost, his job. Croft will be on the sex offenders register for life when he leaves prison.

A hearing to determine how much can be reclaimed from his porn earnings will be held at Ipswich Crown Court on July 20. Speaking after the case, Det Con James Kent, of Ipswich CID, who led the inquiry, said: "This will hopefully send out a message to people who had thought about downloading porn or e-mailing it."

Story date: May 4, 2000