TIFTON — Two Tift County men were among 17 people arrested statewide during a crackdown on child sex crimes recently.

Operation Byte Down involved cooperation between the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and 33 Georgia law enforcement agencies, a GBI statement released Tuesday said.

The crackdown found 13 children living in homes where child sexual exploitation was taking place; one of those arrested admitted to “hands-on sexual offenses” against a child, the GBI said.

Tifton, Duluth, Norcross, Macon, Alpharetta, Augusta, Savannah, Kingsland and Acworth were among the cities involved.

The two Tifton men — one being 65 and the other 36 years old — were booked into the Tift County Jail.

One of the targets of Operation Byte Down was the use of peer-to-peer computer connections to exchange child pornography; another was monitoring online chats of those believed to be trying to contact youngsters to engage in sexual acts, the GBI statement said.

Thirty search warrants were executed statewide, with investigators previewing 137 electronic devices on-scene and seizing 361 devices, including cellphones, tablets, computers and hard drives.

Anyone with information about other cases of child exploitation is asked to contact the GBI Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit at 404-270-8870 or report via the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children CyberTipline at CyberTipline.org.

Anonymous tips can also be submitted by calling 1-800-597-TIPS (8477), online at https://gbi.georgia.gov/submit-tips-online, or by downloading the See Something, Send Something mobile app.