“It’s an unprecedented operation,” says the head of the department who investigated the platform.

The coco.gg site, involved in nearly 23,000 police procedures, was closed by the courts because it was considered a den of predators; its creator was questioned in Bulgaria.

“This is an unprecedented operation”is satisfied, Tuesday June 25, with franceinfo Johanna Brousse, vice-prosecutor and head of the cyber section at Junalco (national jurisdiction in charge of the fight against organized crime) of the Paris prosecutor’s office, after the closure Tuesday morning of the discussion site coco.gg, considered “a predator’s den” by several associations for the defense of childhood and the fight against homophobia. Several suspects have been identified, including the creator of the platform interviewed in Bulgaria.

franceinfo: What did the operation carried out this Tuesday morning consist of?

Johanna Brousse: Operation “Coco” is an operation that took place this Tuesday morning in several countries, an operation coordinated with the help of Eurojust (the European agency for criminal justice cooperation). It first consisted of dismantling the coco.gg platform and rendering the servers inoperable. It also consisted of being able to freeze criminal assets generated by this platform. Finally, it made it possible to interview certain people suspected of being involved in the administration of this platform. Overall, this investigation required the support of all Junalco colleagues, and not just the cyber section. There was support from the financial section of Junalco, it was a large-scale operation with several seized services, customs, the gendarmerie, public finances, and the cooperation of several countries. This is an unprecedented operation.

Were these servers located in France?

No, these servers were not located in France, which is why we needed the cooperation of several countries and a skillfully oiled organization because the perpetrators had taken care to dispatch these servers to the foreign, just like criminal assets, precisely to prevent them from being easily traced.

When did your investigation begin and what did it involve?

The investigation by the Paris public prosecutor’s office was opened at the end of 2023. Initially, we were not content simply with the reports that had been sent to us, but we wanted to truly establish the criminal nature of this platform. To do this, we made a census of all the procedures that involved coconut. In police files, we found nearly 23,000 procedures in which the platform was involved. We also asked all our colleagues from the public prosecutor’s offices in France to provide us with the procedures relating to this platform. We also carried out what we call pseudonymous investigation, by going ourselves to observe the offenses on the platform. We realized that there was no moderation, so that we could do anything and everything, and above all that anyone could register without us being able to find the registrants. There was therefore no way of tracing the perpetrators.

What opened the door to all forms of abuse and crimes on the part of Internet users who visited this platform?

Absolutely, guaranteed anonymity made it possible to commit offenses with complete impunity. We were able to identify, among the offenses committed, various facts, which ranged from child pornography to ambush with extortion, including theft with violence. There are even homicides that have been planned on the platform. There are therefore a variety of offenses committed through coco.gg.

What can justice, on a legal level, reproach the person who set up this site?

Beyond complicity, if he had knowledge of the offenses that were committed, we have in the French legislative arsenal, since 2023, an offense called the “offense of platform administration”, which makes the person responsible creator of this platform if it is used to commit offenses and this person does nothing to enforce the law and verify that there is no abuse on his platform.

So the difficulty of the investigation was that we had to look beyond our borders?

In particular, we have a suspect who was abroad. His criminal assets, which are suspected of coming from the coco platform, were spread across several countries, and his servers in Germany.

How could the suspect get rich if it was a free platform?

It wasn’t that free. There were small services that could require payment, including a service that surprised us. When you were banned for bad behavior, which was very rare, you could return to the site by paying a fee. The suspect therefore enriched himself in this way. There were also small digital rooms where you could chat for a small fee. We suspect the main author of having earned several million euros in recent years and of being at the head of a colossal fortune.

The site administrator couldn’t have been unaware of what was happening on the site and the possible consequences?

Justice will continue its work, hear from everyone, continue the analysis of the servers, and it will be the work of justice to demonstrate that this platform was able to prosper knowingly without preventive measures being taken.