MORE than 40 British girls may have fallen victim to a suspected internet paedophile who has been arrested in Canada.

Mark Bedford, 21, is alleged to have befriended children online and then urged them to remove their clothes. He then allegedly threatened to show the pictures to their relatives or even to harm them unless they performed sex acts over a webcam.

Officers from west Kent, where a number of the victims are thought to live, joined Canadian police in a raid on Bedford’s property last Wednesday in Kingston, Ontario. They seized a computer system, floppy disks, CDs and other evidence.

More than 100 children are believed to have been targeted by Bedford, who was unemployed and living at home with his parents. Kent police said that at least 42 of those were from west Kent and East Sussex.

It is believed that Bedford’s particular tactic might explain why so many of his alleged victims came from such a small area. Officers believe he operated under the names Marco1812000 and Supalover666 and hacked into his victims’ e-mail accounts to access their lists of friends and contacts.

The girls, whose ages range from nine to 15, were threatened with rape, harm and even death if they failed to co-operate. Statements have been taken from the majority of the alleged victims and all of the families have been informed.

Bedford has been charged with luring a child by means of a computer, making, possessing and distributing child pornography and extortion. He is due to appear in court in Ontario tomorrow.

The charges follow a nine-month investigation which involved British police.

“I have never seen this many victims involved,” said Frank Goldschmidt, a detective sergeant with Ontario police. “Some of the kids involved in this type of activity these days really don’t feel like they’re doing anything wrong because they’re in the comfort of their own home.

“It amazes me to this day that parents allow their children to be locked up in their bedrooms with state-of-the-art computer equipment and then they get involved in this type of activity.”

Chris Cloke, head of child protection awareness at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, said yesterday that parents and children should know that “stranger danger rules apply to the net, too”.

Bedford’s father Gary was this weekend said to be “totally devastated” by the allegations that his son faces. “We were totally blindsided. We had no idea what was going on,” he told the Calgary Sun newspaper.

In a separate international investigation last week, the Home Office’s child exploitation and online protection centre organised a series of police raids on addresses in London, Wiltshire, Surrey, Kent and Greater Manchester. They were targeting businesses offering pay-per-view websites showing images of child sex abuse. Police arrested 13 men and women suspected of being connected with an east European crime gang.

Last month the Virtual Global Taskforce, a law enforcement initiative designed to track down and convict people preying on children on the web, secured its first UK prosecution following an online complaint by a child.

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