In an operation that began in January 2020 the Policia Nacional have arrested 18 paedophiles who distributed child sexual exploitation material.
According to official police reports, international cooperation with the Embassy of the United States, led to the successful arrests of these people. The Embassy informed police they had detected various internet connections in Spain. From these connections, it seemed content containing child pornography material was being distributed. The information was originally brought to light when the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) made complaints.
It was discovered that at least 20 people within Spain used their virtual accounts to store and share files of child sexual exploitation content with other paedophiles.
Use of VPN
They shared this content both from computers and mobile devices. Furthermore, they made use of private connections to make it difficult to locate users.
The police stated that it was usual in this type of crime, for the perpetrators to use private connections (VPN). This is done to anonymise the true IP addresses of their terminals. Moreover, in this way, they often hide or make it difficult to find their location.
Furthermore, those arrested used computers, laptops and mobile devices which were often synchronised with each other.
Arrests
The operation ended in the successful arrest of 18 paedophiles. These were from the following provinces in Spain;
- A Coruña
- Alicante
- Barcelona,
- Burgos
- Cádiz
- Castellón
- Ciudad Real
- Girona
- Guipúzkoa
- Lanzarote
- Madrid
- Tarragona
- Tenerife
During the arrests, police seized the agents 21 mobile phones, two tablets, six computers, eight hard drives, six memory cards, 17 USB sticks and a camera.
The Policia Nacional wishes to remind citizens of the importance of not sharing or saving this type of sexual images and videos featuring minors, as they would be committing a crime.
Furthermore, if you are aware of such things taking place, you can denounce the content by emailing denuncias.pornografia.infantil@policia.es
Also read: Interpol launch Cyber Crime Campaign #YouMayBeNext
