The National Police has arrested 121 people in different parts of Spain for distributing child pornography through a digital platform and has seized a total of 500 terabytes (TB) of content in an operation initiated by agents of the Central Police Unit. Cybercrime and which has been classified as one of the most important carried out in Spain.
125 searches have been carried out throughout the country in which 368 hard drives, 114 USB memories, 100 DVDs, 60 computers and other computer equipment have been seized. The audiovisual material seized from those arrested consists of 500 terabytes of extremely harsh pornographic content starring minors.
The 121 arrested, 118 men and three women, used the same digital platform to obtain and share illicit content, as detailed by the National Police.
One of the arrests, carried out in Madrid, allowed a man to seize more than two million files of sexual abuse committed on very young girls. Many of the videos were characterized by the high degree of violence used on the victims and were spread across ten large-capacity hard drives.
In Alicante, agents arrested a man who possessed a large amount of multimedia files containing explicitly sexual images of two underage males. During the analysis of the files, the investigators realized that the material had been recorded inside the arrestee’s home.
In Cáceres and Almería three people were arrested and the courts determined their imprisonment based on the amount of content found in their possession, with one of these detainees reaching an agreement for five years in prison for a crime of possession and distribution of child sexual exploitation material.
During the 125 searches carried out in the homes or workplaces of those arrested, 946 electronic storage devices were seized – 368 hard drives, 427 CDs and DVDs, 114 USBs, 37 memory cards – 60 computers, 47 mobile phones, six tablets, a video camera and other electronic devices.
All the material intervened in the operation is subject to a technical police analysis, in search of new evidence that will allow continuing investigation efforts to identify new victims of sexual abuse, or contacts of the detainees who make up a network of pedophiles.
The arrests occurred after an investigation was initiated as a result of the preventive work of the National Cyber ??Patrol Police to combat pedophile networks. The operation has required the participation of 46 territorial units of agents specialized in cybercrime.
