Police arrest seven and report 23 in Italy-wide crackdown on child sexual abuse material ring

The operation

Italian police ran an operation called 'Sweet Strip' across the country, coordinated by the prosecutor's office in Rome. Seven people were arrested and 23 others were reported while at liberty, bringing the number of people identified to 30. Investigators carried out 30 home and computer searches across Italy. Four of those arrested are accused of creating and running the online game chats that drew in minors. Two of those identified are minors.

Arrested7

Reported while at liberty23

Arrested

7 people

Reported while at liberty

23 people

Data from the article text

How the scheme worked

The case started when the mother of a 14-year-old girl filed a complaint after an adult lured her daughter into an online game on a popular instant messaging platform. Reports describe the game as a series of sexually explicit challenges, in which the adult awarded points for each step. Five points were given for removing a T-shirt, ten for showing underwear and up to 50 for acts of self-eroticism. Some reports call the game 'Omegle Game', and Fanpage says it ran on the Omegle platform, which pairs users at random with strangers.

Participants were matched with adult strangers in text and video chats. To join, users needed an invitation link and had to pay electronically or in cryptocurrency. Investigators said the chats were built to draw in minors and to produce material for sale.

Videos and payments

Investigators seized hundreds of gigabytes of video showing violent abuse of children, some of them very young, along with 60 IT devices. Many of the recordings were made by screen capture during video calls set up for that purpose. The material was then shared and sold online, and the organisers earned money from those sales, with payments accepted in electronic form or cryptocurrency. A paid channel, called 'Lumaca' in some reports, was where police found 30 people spreading child abuse material. In the Rome home of one of the arrested people, officers also found 895 grams of marijuana.

Investigation and searches

The Cosc Lazio, the regional cybersecurity operations centre, identified the four people who created and organised the chats. Police then focused on the paid channel and tracked down buyers and alleged co-responsible people. The searches were carried out across Italy with the help of Cosc units in Lombardy, Veneto, Piedmont, Umbria, Campania, Sardinia, Apulia and Calabria. The reports describe the operation as complex and say it covered much of the national territory.