A German tourist was arrested for allegedly running child porn websites from Thailand.

The suspect, identified by police only as Steffen, 54, posted thousands of sexual clips of children on two channels on the dark web.

He reportedly charged customers at least 10 USD in cryptocurrency to access the explicit materials, before converting the assets into cash in his Thai bank accounts.

Thailand's Central Investigation Bureau launched a probe after receiving a tip-off from the US Homeland Security Investigations that Steffen was running the websites out of the Southeast Asian country.

Police traced his location to a condo in 'Sin City' Pattaya, and raided the premises on March 5. They seized from him 36 articles of evidence, including a laptop, a host computer, a mobile phone, data storage devices, bank accounts, credit cards, and SIM cards.

Police Major General Athip Pongsiwapai, commander of the Technology Crime Suppression Division, said: 'From questioning, the suspect stated that he had previously worked as a freelance programmer in Germany, taking on various programming jobs. After retiring, he moved to Thailand and used his programming skills to create websites selling obscene media.

'The suspect also stated that he was the manager of two dark web websites, which contained more than 5,000 obscene videos, most of which were child pornography. There are over 10,000 members, each of whom made a minimum payment of 10 USD to view the material.'

Steffen's channels were estimated to have made a combined income of 100,000 USD over three years. He was also found to have sold a spyware subscription that allowed users to capture information on phones or computers - including photos, device location, incoming and outgoing calls, typing information, and private files.

The German faces multiple charges including possession of child pornography for sexual exploitation, distributing child pornography for commercial purposes, distributing, producing, possessing, importing or exporting child pornography out of Thailand, and uploading obscene content into a computer system accessible to the public.