The National Police have arrested four people in Madrid, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Algeciras for allegedly storing and distributing child pornography after a citizen found pedophile files on a lost USB stick. In addition, there is another suspect in Lanzarote who is under investigation.
The investigation, carried out by the Central Cybercrime Unit, began when a person found a bunch of keys next to a memory stick in Madrid.
According to the General Directorate of the Police, when checking the content of the device in the hope of identifying its owner, he discovered a folder with several child pornography files, so he handed it over to the police station.
Based on that clue, the investigators managed to identify the owner of the USB stick and requested a search warrant from the judicial authority to enter and search his home.
In the property, they seized a hard drive and another memory stick with more files of sexual exploitation of minors, so they proceeded to arrest him.
As a result of subsequent cyber-patrolling, the agents managed to identify four other people who were disseminating the aforementioned files through programs designed for this purpose.
One of them, arrested in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, was caught sharing at least one hundred files of child sexual exploitation, while the arrested in Algeciras ended up admitting that he occasionally downloaded this type of content, although he later deleted them.
The attitude of the latter, the Police remarks, is common in this type of criminals, since they think that if the pedophile files are not found on their devices they cannot be accused of any crime.
For their part, the agents located two other suspects in Lanzarote. One of them allegedly downloaded a hundred videos and photos of child sexual exploitation and was arrested, while the other is being investigated.
In the framework of this investigation, baptized as Operation Lutecio and Royal, the police intervened four computers, a tablet, four cell phones, five hard drives, ten memory cards and a USB stick.