Spanish police arrest 18 in operation targeting child sex abuse

Spanish National Police have arrested 18 people for alleged online distribution and possession of child sexual exploitation material.

Those arrested, who stored and shared illicit material both on computers and mobile devices, made use of private connections to make it difficult to locate their use. During the operation, the agents seized 21 mobile phones, two tablets, six computers, eight hard drives, six memory cards, 17 USB sticks and a camera.

The arrests were made in A Coruña, Alicante, Barcelona, Burgos, Cádiz, Castellón, Ciudad Real, Girona, Guipúzkoa, Lanzarote, Madrid, Tarragona and Tenerife.

The investigation began in January 2020 thanks to a tip-off from the United States Embassy of the detection of various Internet connections in Spain from which, presumably, content containing child pornography material was being distributed.

Specifically, the information received was tracked to incidents recorded by Spain’s National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

Those involved had used private connections (VPNs) to hide the true IP addresses of their computers, in order to hinder the location of the users.

The Spanish police have strongly reminded citizens of the importance of not sharing or saving any type of sexual images or videos that they might receive featuring minors, as it is a crime. Any content received should be reported to the police via email: denuncias.pornografia.infantil@policia.es

🚩Detenidos 18 pedófilos que distribuían y poseían material de explotación sexual infantil, en 13 provincias de #España

Usaban conexiones #VPN para dificultar la localización de sus usuarios

⚠RECUERDA: si recibes #pornografíainfantil
📩denuncias.pornografia.infantil@policia.es pic.twitter.com/n9PseSxa6z
— Policía Nacional (@policia) May 31, 2022