Over 100 cyber investigators from the State Police were involved throughout Italy, carrying out 30 searches delegated by the Turin Public Prosecutor's Office as part of the operation to combat online child pornography called "Lucignolo": among the regions involved there it is also Sardinia, as well as Piedmont, Lazio, Lombardy, Liguria, Tuscany, Veneto, Puglia, Sicily, Campania and Calabria. Three arrests and 24 suspects.
The investigative activity was conducted by the Cosc (Operations Center for Cyber Security) of Piedmont and Valle D'Aosta, with the coordination of the National Center for the fight against online child pornography of Polpost: the agents infiltrated, under cover, an online network of «subjects dedicated to the publication and dissemination of material created through the exploitation of minors».
In the darkness of anonymity guaranteed by a series of technical measures, criminals exchanged illicit material of a different nature online, which also reproduced sexual violence, using "coded" language so as not to attract too much attention, such as «Hello , I'm looking for puppies" or "Do you have min?", referring to minors.
The complex and delicate investigation activity of the Postal Police lasted several months precisely to allow the undercover agents to gain accreditation in the pedophile communities before direct contact to give a real identity to the series of pseudonyms used online.
The searches led to the seizure of mobile phones, tablets, hard disks, pen drives, computers, email accounts and social profiles and made it possible to find the accounts used by the suspects to request child pornography material and, kept on IT media, a large quantity of illicit material.
(Unioneonline/E.Fr.)