Mark Gary Bedford, from Kingston, Ont., is accused of luring and extorting girls as young as nine into performing sexual acts on a webcam.

Canadian and British police have called it one of the largest child pornography cases of its kind in history, and allege Bedford hacked into the girls' email accounts, obtained their "buddy lists," and then contacted those friends while passing himself as that friend.

"(The suspect) would convince those victims to expose themselves to him by a webcam, at which time he would capture those images," Ontario Provincial Police Det. Sgt. Frank Goldschmidt said at a press conference in Toronto Friday morning.

"If those particular victims would not perform further sexual acts as his request, he would initially threaten to post these images or movie files to other websites, to family members or to friends."

Bedford allegedly used threats of rape, bodily harm and death in order to coerce the victims into committing further sexual acts via the webcam so that he could capture the images onto his computer, Goldschmidt said.

"I have never seen this many victims involved, and I'm safe to say that at this point and time in this early stage of this investigation we're looking at well in excess of 100,'' he said.

The victims are between 9 and 15 years of age and live in Edmonton, Kingston, Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., and in the United Kingdom, police said.

An initial scan of the suspect's computer system "has revealed the potential for an extreme number of additional victims," Goldschmidt said.

Investigators are still examining a lot of material and information on the computer, hard drives and floppy disks police have seized.

The accused is unemployed and was living at home with his parents, police said, and there is no indication he was trying to make money through his alleged actions.

At this stage of their investigation police believe Bedford was acting alone, and all of the victims appear to be female.

Police allege Bedford operated under the screen names Marco1812000 and Supalover666.

The accused's technique to hack into email profiles was sophisticated, said Goldschmidt, adding he doesn't know how to do it.

Kent Police helped identify the victims in England, but the force's Insp. Stephen Evans said it is still not clear why girls were being targeted in his homeland.

Thursday's arrest came after a nine-month investigation by police forces in Ontario, the RCMP and Kent police.

Appearing on CTV's Canada AM before the press conference, Goldschmidt said working with other police forces is crucial in the global fight against child porn.

"The Internet is a world wide network and it basically forces us to communicate with other law enforcement agencies because the Internet allows individuals to communicate with individuals around the world," he said.

"So for us to complete our investigations, we need to speak to other law enforcement forces from around the world."

Goldschmidt, however, said stronger legislation is needed to crack down on pedophiles.

Bedford is charged with two counts of child luring, two counts of possession of child pornography, three counts of making child pornography, two counts of distributing child pornography and three counts of extortion.

All of these charges stem from victims in Edmonton, police said. More charges are pending.

Bedford is being held in a Kingston jail and his next court appearance is on Monday.