Members of the Technological Investigation Team (Edite), part of the Organic Unit of the Judicial Police of the Albacete Civil Guard Command, during the Worldpsex operation, apprehended a 29-year-old individual residing in Madrid, suspected of committing a crime involving the corruption of minors for pornographic purposes, along with threats and extortion through a Turkish instant messaging application. Additionally, 15 others are under investigation, three of whom are located in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
They are being scrutinised as alleged perpetrators of a purported crime regarding the corruption of minors for pornographic reasons, specifically in the context of online child grooming. This was initiated after contacting the victim via mobile and deceiving her into submitting multimedia content – including images, videos, and audio – of a sexual nature, alongside engaging in virtual conversations through video calls with explicit content.
The investigation commenced following a report from a neighbour in an Albacete town who discovered explicit pornographic material on her 12-year-old daughter’s phone, originating from users on a mobile messaging platform.
Consequently, the Edite from the Albacete Civil Guard Command assumed responsibility for the enquiry, initiating preliminary investigations to analyse, extract, and secure data of evidential significance.
An examination of the mobile phone revealed that the minor had registered on the targeted application and had publicly disclosed an image of herself along with another minor on her profile.
This image, which spread virally through the application, prompted communications from 56 users who exploited the platform’s features and anonymity to engage the minor in sexting sessions, urging her to produce images, videos, or audio clips with sexual content, often after having shared pornographic files with her.
The Edite investigation confirmed that some users achieved their aims of virtual intimacy by conducting video calls featuring high sexual content via the aforementioned application’s chat.
The civil guards involved in the investigation were able to collect precise information regarding several participants, even though most had employed anti-forensic methods to evade identification, such as concealing or altering the IP addresses of the devices they utilised.
One of the suspects, residing in Madrid, had constructed three distinct profiles on the messaging platform, leading the victim to believe she was corresponding with different individuals.
After deceiving her, he persuaded her to transmit multimedia files containing sexual content. Once in possession of these files, he resorted to threats and coercion, demanding further explicit content under the threat of distributing her files online to other users if she did not comply with his demands, even to the extent of establishing virtual contacts with the minor through multiple sexually explicit video calls. Following identification and location, this individual was apprehended.
The police operation resulted in the Civil Guard investigating 15 individuals for the alleged crime of corruption of minors for pornographic purposes, with one suspect in the province of Barcelona, two in Bilbao, one in Burgos, one in Cuenca, one in Ciudad Real, one in Madrid, another in Málaga, and two in Murcia.
Additionally, another suspect has been identified in Ourense province, and one in Seville, with cooperation from members of the Judicial Police units from the corresponding provinces being integral to the Edite team’s efforts.
The actions undertaken by the Edite Team from the Albacete Civil Guard have been submitted to Investigative Court Number 3 in Hellín, Albacete, which is overseeing the proceedings.