Agents of the National Police have arrested in different parts of Spain, including Lanzarote, a total of 18 people for alleged distribution and possession of child sexual exploitation material through the Internet. The detainees, who stored and shared the illicit material from both computers and mobile devices, used private connections to hinder the location of their users.
During the operation, the agents have seized 21 mobile phones, two tablets, six computers, eight hard drives, six memory cards, 17 USB sticks and a camera. The arrests have been made in A Coruña, Alicante, Barcelona, Burgos, Cádiz, Castellón, Ciudad Real, Girona, Guipúzkoa, Lanzarote, Madrid, Tarragona and Tenerife.
As explained by the Police, the investigation began in January 2020 "thanks to international cooperation in the fight against sexual exploitation of minors through ICT". In this case, it was the Embassy of the United States that informed the agents of the detection of several Internet connections in Spain from which, presumably, content with child pornography material was being distributed. Specifically, the information received originated from complaints filed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). At least 20 individuals, located in our country, would have used their virtual accounts to store and share files with child sexual exploitation content with other pedophiles.
"As is usual in the commission of this type of crime, its authors used private connections (VPN) to anonymize the true IP addresses of their terminals. In this way, they prevent or hinder the location of their users," the Police specify.
The arrested people made use of both their computers (laptops and desktops) and their mobile terminals - often synchronized with each other - which is why the investigators had to focus the search on any computer device.
The National Police reminds citizens of the importance of not sharing or saving this type of sexual images and videos starring minors, as they would be incurring in the commission of a crime. For this, there is the possibility of reporting the content by email denuncias.pornografia.infantil@policia.es.
