Police have busted a child porn studio in Sofia that was used for filming and distributing homosexual scenes with teenage boys.

The owner, Ivan Panov - a forty-year-old Bulgarian born in the southwestern city of Blagoevgrad, has been captured. He has lived in Sofia for several years and has spent about a year running the illegal copying and distribution of the pornographic content in Bulgaria and the US.

Media reports state that wealthy businessmen had financed Panov's activities. The Internet traffic from the man's studio to USA-based servers has been quite heavy, and the movies were sold for EUR 12-22 apiece. There was a discount for bigger orders and 10 movies cost EUR 60 in total.

Panov had used the screen names July and Radi for enticing men and underage boys. He had created a web page advertising European and American pornographic movies. When contacted he sent to the interested clients an additional catalogue. According to the website ordering the newest titles took about 12 hours.

While searching the premises, police found 900 CDs with various pornographic content.
All of the movies were gay-oriented and most of them featured underage boys. One of the movies is called "Bulgarian Boys" and features Bulgarians. Police officials have said that around five Bulgarian boys have taken part in the movies for sure. However experts are still to say how many underage Bulgarian boys are shown in all the movies.

Police claim that Panov had stood on both sides of the camera - taken part in some of the movies and directed others. He had kept the names of his special clients in a little black notebook, but there is still no information whether the list features prominent Bulgarians