The director of a youth information association, a sports instructor and the deputy of a mayor are notably involved.
A vast and terrifying dragnet. A sprawling international online child pornography network has been dismantled by French gendarmes, we have learned Le Figaro to the authorities this Thursday, December 19, confirming information from BFMTV. 95 people were identified and arrested in France. More than 200 terabytes of child pornography images and videos were made available to participants, who scoured the Signal messaging application.
The investigation, which began in 2023, resulted in a coordinated operation in France which took place from December 9 to 19, 2024. Among the individuals arrested and placed in police custody, 36 were already known for sexual offenses against with regard to minors or “consultation of sites featuring minors”we can read in a press release from the gendarmerie. All those arrested are adult men aged 18 to 74, except one, a 16-year-old minor. The majority of suspects admitted the facts.
The searches revealed 375,000 photos and 156,000 videos while 122 computers, 330 digital media and 152 smartphones were seized, containing 217 TB of data.
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The profile of the accused
“The suspects remain mainly in the Île-de-France, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes or Grand Est regions. One of them worked as director of a youth information association, one was a sports instructor, the deputy of a mayor is also involved”continue the authorities.
The investigations began during the search of the telephone of an individual living in Hauts-de-Seine, accused of habitually consulting pornographic images. Cyber investigators from the Versailles research section (SR), with the assistance of the National Cyber Unit (UNC), discovered by going back through the thread the existence of several discussion groups on Signal encrypted messaging, including the name is unequivocal on their subject.
“What is hidden behind these forums is this whole galaxy of child criminals who potentially can be extremely dangerous because they can also be predatory”Colonel Hervé Petry of the UNC explained to AFP. “The fight against child crime is an area in which the gendarmerie, for decades, has been very invested, very committed. Thanks to the rise of social networks, this has taken on a truly extremely worrying dimension since it has exploded: before social networks, it took several years for these people to be able to access this type of images. And even more so when approaching children”he further detailed. “Today, with social networks, there is an “increase in supply” since images and videos can be exchanged extremely easily (…) Now, we can connect at any time »according to him.
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