Operation “Comet”: child pornography and sexual acts with a 14-year-old, 6 arrested between Lombardy and Puglia

The activity of the State Police in combating online child pornography continues unabated.

At the end of two distinct and complex investigative activities, the Postal Police of Brescia e Milano, with the coordination of the Public Prosecutor's Office of Brescia, reported six men responsible for possession of child pornography and sexual acts with minors in a state of freedom.

The complex operation, called "Cometa", arose from a complaint presented by the mother of a fourteen-year-old resident in a town in the province of Bergamo. The girl had withdrawn into herself for some time and had shown a clear change in her behavior. Interpreting these anomalies as an alarm bell, the mother checked the contents of the girl's smartphone, discovering that there were sexually explicit photos and videos, as well as chats on various social networks with unmistakable content.

Thanks to the investigations carried out by the specialists of the Lombard Postal Police with the help of colleagues from the Bari Department and the coordination of the National Center for the Fight against Online Child Pornography, it was ascertained that the teenager had ended up in the shirts of six people aged between aged 18 and 26 (4 workers, 1 bricklayer and 1 student), resident in the provinces of Brescia, Bergamo, Milano and Taranto, who had lured her into the chats of the social networks to which she was registered.

The subsequent IT and home searches carried out on the suspects made it possible to find not only the offending chats on their devices, but also photos and videos with child pornography content.

The 6 subjects, reported in a state of freedom, will now have to answer for the serious crimes attributed to them, ranging from possession of child pornography to sexual acts with a minor.