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A major operation to break up a platform which distributed child pornography, Operation Stream, coordinated by Europol and led by Germany, has resulted in 79 arrests in several countries around the world, 16 of which have been made in Spain. One man from Malaga is under investigation who has been found to have made payments to the application, to which he admitted upon his arrest.
The perpetrators allegedly bought access to the dark web platform with cryptocurrencies. Across Spain, the National Police force carried out the operation in Alicante, Almeria, Barcelona, Jaén, La Palmas, La Rioja, Madrid, Malaga, Murcia, Orense, Sevilla, Tarragona, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Valencia and Zaragoza.
The German-led investigation was carried out in a total of 38 countries and along with the 79 arrests, 1,393 people have been identified. Some of those arrested not only accessed the platform but also allegedly abused children.
The platform operated as a repository for videos of child sexual exploitation and was continuously growing as users uploaded their own contributions. It had almost two million subscribers and some 91,000 videos, a number that was growing at a rate of more than three videos per hour. Registration was free and gave access to a partial, reduced-quality previews of the videos.
If a user wanted to watch them in full or higher quality, they had to pay using cryptocurrencies. Each video purchased could be downloaded or viewed online in high quality. In addition, credits could be earned that could then be used to purchase other videos, contributing new recordings that were not already on the site or helping to classify those already on the site. In Spain 17 people had bought videos and one person had also uploaded their own material.
The only distributor in Spain was a computer student who was found, in addition to a large collection of child pornography, to have access links to both the main page of the investigation and other child pornography sites, payment receipts and other personal data. Among those arrested in Spain, there was a wide variety of profiles from an alleged trafficker in Alicante to a dentist in Murcia.
The person investigated in Malaga had moved to La Línea de la Concepción (Cadiz) where officers travelled and the man was located. Although he did not have pornography on him at the time of the search, they did find sufficient evidence of payment and he admitted to the offences, for which he was arrested.
Operation Stream is the largest operation ever handled by Europol's experts in the fight against child sexual exploitation. The countries involved in the investigation are Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
During the police intervention more than 3,000 electronic devices have been seized globally and a total of 39 minors have been put under protection.
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