WASHINGTON (AP) — Fourteen men were charged with operating an online child exploitation network that investigators said preyed upon hundreds of boys across the United States and overseas, authorities announced Tuesday.

Law enforcement officials said the arrests were part of a worrisome trend in which children are being enticed by adults to post sexually explicit images of themselves that are then shared online. In this case, authorities said, users of an underground network posed online as girls to coerce boys into sharing with them child pornography images.