The Specialized Cybercrime Fiscal Unit (UFECI), headed by Horacio Azzolin, warned about the activities organized by a pedophile network that tries to link up with minors between 10 and 14 years old through messages that are sent to groups or communities that interact on the WhatsApp application.
As stated on the site “Prosecutors”dependent on the Attorney General of the Nation, these groups or channels are created under the façade of a challenge: creating large communities, that is, with many members.
“Get people in” either “We have to get to 2000”, These are some of the names of the groups that were identified and reported. The members of the network thus encourage children and adolescents to add their peers and friends to these channels, as a challenge.
After entering these virtual communities, administrators begin to send photos and videos of sexual, violent or discriminatory content. Complaints made in recent days claim that the organizers “They offer money in exchange for teenagers and children sending them similar files.”
The UFECI warns that, in the event of becoming aware of a situation of these characteristics, “The facts can be reported to the police stations or specialized units of each jurisdiction in the country.”
The Public Prosecutor’s Office recommended that joining WhatsApp groups can be “configured by each user within the ‘Privacy’ section from the application’s Settings menu.
The first complaints
In dialogue with the newspaper Los Andes, a father from Mendoza said that it was his 13-year-old son who confessed that he had been added to the group of that social network and that there they had sent messages that had generated “very impressed”.
“There were images of explicit paedophilia and others of extreme violence that I had never seen before. I immediately contacted Juan Roccuzzo (from the NGO Cyberdelitos). Then I filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor’s Office,” he counted.
“With the name of the group they generate buzz and thus they add boys and girls without limits. Everyone wants to include their friends. Once the crime is detected, it is okay to leave the group, but the important thing is to file a report because, if not, it means saving yourself and not protecting the rest of the minors. There are many of them and this is an explosive bomb”warned Juan G., who since then has not stopped sending the alert status through all his WhatsApp groups warning responsible adults about the new modus operandi of the pedophile group.
From that case, around 20 complaints were filed in Mendoza and the same number in the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the City of Buenos Aires and in Córdoba.
