A man who authorities described as one of the world's largest facilitators of child pornography has been sentenced to 27 years in prison

• Eric Eoin Marques ran a network of dark web servers that hosted millions of images depicting child sex abuse, prosecutors said.
• He was handed a 27-year sentence for his crimes, which the judge called "truly despicable."
• The US attorney said Marques created both "the demand and the supply" for child pornography all over the world.

A man flagged by the FBI as the world's largest facilitator of child pornography was sentenced on Wednesday to 27 years in federal prison with lifetime supervision after his release.

New York-born Eric Eoin Marques, 36, a citizen of both the US and Ireland, ran a network of dark web servers that hosted over 200 websites distributing millions of images and videos containing child sex abuse, according to the prosecutors' statement. Marques called the entire network "Freedom Hosting."

Many of the images showed the rape and torture of minors before they hit puberty, and even the sadistic abuse of infants and toddlers, prosecutors said. Law enforcement had never seen almost two million of these illicit images until they discovered Marques' dark web servers, said prosecutors.

"Mr. Marques essentially created a market for others to trade and promote child pornography, and he was creating the demand and the supply for a very dangerous and harmful trade to children throughout the world," Jonathan Lenzner, acting US attorney for the district of Maryland, told RTE News.

Authorities filed federal charges against Marques in 2013, and he pleaded guilty on February 2020 to conspiracy to advertise child pornography on the dark web.

At the sentencing hearing on Wednesday, US District Judge Theodore Chuang said Marques' crimes were "truly despicable" and that they were like those of a drug kingpin, according to the Associated Press.

Chuang agreed to recommend that Marques be given credit by the federal Bureau of Prisons for the eight years he served in custody after his 2013 arrest in Ireland, per the AP. Chuang previously rejected a plea deal in which prosecutors asked for a prison sentence of 15 to 21 years, saying the arrangement was "flawed" and that he wanted to give Marques a longer sentence.

Before he was sentenced, Marques apologized to his victims and asked Chuang for mercy, per the AP.

"I know what I did was wrong," he said to the court, adding that he wouldn't do anything like this again.

"There is no one in this courtroom who is not repulsed by what happened in this case," said assistant federal public defender Brendan Hurson, one of Marques' lawyers, per the AP. "He will not do this again, and he is remorseful for what he has done."

"Today's sentencing of Eric Marques sends a clear message to perpetrators of this egregious crime that no matter where you are in the world, law enforcement will hold you accountable and bring you to justice," said FBI Assistant Director Calvin Shivers in a prosecutors' statement.