National Police officers in Viator, Almería, have detained a 20 year old who used social networks to coerce around 600 adolescents between the ages of 12 years and 17 years to pose naked in front of a webcam.
The youth used over 500 different screen names and email addresses to create profiles on various social networks and is now being charged with corruption of minors, threats, coercion and revealing private information.
A raid on the youth;s house yielded 1,000 videos plus loads of photos of minors either naked or semi-naked as well as hundreds of links to child pornography sites. It is thought that he has been carrying out these sorts of threats since 2007.
He would make contact with minors and tell them that he was a hacker and would post photos of them on pornographic websites or install a virus on their computer unless they posed naked in front of their webcam.
The photos were then stored on CD’s and DVD’s.
The investigation began following a complaint from a 12 year old in Oviedo who was coerced by the detainee. Eventually, the source of the threats was tracked to Viator and then to the home of the detainee.
Police are now trying to identify all the other victims.