Nine people were arrested in flagrante delicto by the State Police as part of a vast operation throughout the country to combat online child pornography, coordinated by the District Attorney’s Office of Catania. The investigation, conducted by the Cyber Security Operations Center of the Catania Postal Police, made it possible to investigate 26 people in various regions for possession and dissemination of child pornography material, subjected to personal and computer searches.
Thousands of files, exchanges of images and videos were seized, with even very young children being abused.
The investigations began with a complex computer analysis activity on some electronic devices seized from a suspect, arrested months ago for the same conduct, on which – within a messaging platform – groups dedicated to exchanging images had been found and videos. Meticulous and complex investigations, even of an extremely technical nature, led to the identification of the subjects active in the groups, against whom the Catania District Attorney’s Office issued personal and computer search orders.
The searches were carried out with the collaboration of the various operational centers for cyber security of the Postal Police in Catania (1), Rome (3), Milan (3), Brescia (2), Varese (1), Bergamo (1), Catanzaro (1), Bari (2), Foggia (1), Turin (2), Cuneo (1), Genoa (2), Imperia (1), Avellino (1), Livorno (1), Prato (1), Ravenna (1), Ascoli Piceno (1).
Those arrested reside in the provinces of Catania (1), Rome (1), Milan (2), Florence (1), Bergamo (1), Ravenna (1), Varese (1) and Imperia (1). One of them, in addition to thousands of child pornography files, had the digital format of the book “Guida del padofilo” available in his cloud.
The material found and seized during the searches is being examined by the Catania District Prosecutor’s Office and the Postal Police for further investigative investigations also useful for the identification of the young victims.
