NEWARK, N.J. – A Ukrainian man who federal prosecutors say may be the most significant distributor of child pornography ever prosecuted in the United States was charged in New Jersey on Monday with operating a network of websites.

Maksym Shynkarenko, 33, from Kharkov, Ukraine, founded and operated a Ukraine-based child pornography website that had customers around the world and has resulted in 560 convictions throughout the United States alone, the U.S. attorney’s office for New Jersey said.

A 32-count indictment against Shynkarenko says he traded in tens of thousands of hardcore pornographic images and videos that depicted children ranging from infants to toddlers and teenagers being graphically sexually assaulted or abused, in most cases by adults.

In some cases, the videos were submitted by customers — later prosecuted — who had filmed themselves actively molesting children, according to Paul Fishman, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey.

Operating a network of websites with names including “Illegal.CP,” “The Sick Child Room,” “Hottest Childporn Garden,” and “Pedo Heaven,” Shynkarenko allegedly made hundreds of thousands of dollars “effectively selling tickets to the exploitation of children” from 2003 until 2008, Fishman said.

Shynkarenko is charged with child exploitation enterprise, advertising child pornography, transporting and shipping child pornography, money laundering and other counts.