Child pornography in chat, arrests: there is also a priest

Child pornography, vanquished by the Turin police a network of Italian users who exchanged pornographic material made using minors under the age of eighteen on a well-known messaging platform. The investigators of the Postal and Communications Police carried out 26 search decrees and investigated as many subjects, responsible for the detention and dissemination of material created through the exploitation of minors and the seizure of thousands of files. A priest, a 37-year-old computer technician and the creator of the pay channel object of the first investigations, a boy at the time of the facts were arrested respectively in Campania, Puglia and Piedmont. The activity, directed by the Turin Public Prosecutor’s Office and coordinated by the Postal and Communications Police Service – National Center for the Fight against Online Child Pornography, involved the entire national territory, involving 11 Departments of the Postal Police in the search operations. The investigations were carried out ‘undercover’ by the policemen of the Piedmontese capital: as early as February 2021 the agents had activated a monitoring service on a messaging platform that boasts guarantees of broad anonymity for users, focusing their attention on some channels open, frequented mainly by Italian users. To carry out the activity, a long preparatory work was necessary, consisting in the search for a relationship of trust with the interlocutors who from time to time showed themselves interested in the exchange of material. Having obtained the elements useful for the continuation of the investigation, the computer traces left on the network by the Internet users were shared, which allowed their identification. The presence of a closed environment, advertised by its promoter, was particularly interesting to whom child pornography material was disclosed upon payment of a sum of money that enabled them to subscribe to the channel, which was also the subject of investigations during the investigation. The analysis of the elements highlighted by the police led to a total of 26 recipients of the search decrees, issued by the Organized Crime and Computer Crimes Group of the Turin AG and carried out, as well as in Piedmont, with the collaboration of the Offices of Specialties of the Campania, Emilia Romagna, Lazio, Liguria, Lombardy, Puglia, Sicily, Tuscany, Umbria, Veneto.