The examples of Internet investigators who track pedophiles online are multiplying.
Sometimes with convincing results which provide justice with the beginnings of evidence to investigate.
Europe 1 was able to meet a collective of trackers who act from the east of France.
When Internet users track pedophiles ... and it works!
The examples of citizen-investigators to fight against online pedophilia are multiplying, as in Vesoul, Dijon, Bordeaux and Vittel recently where, each time, a suspect has been arrested.
These ordinary citizens improvise themselves as web vigilantes and spend hours on social networks managing the profiles of fake children who serve as hooks for cybercriminals.
Behind the last two arrests in northeastern France, for example, there is a very organized group led by a man who calls himself a "whistleblower" and who, for obvious reasons, wants to remain anonymous.
His collective is called "Team Moore".
Because the man calls himself Steven Moore, ensures that he is 40 years old and that he works as a salesman.
“In 18 months,” he says, “we trained 1,600 volunteers”.
Understand 1,600 Internet users who track pedophiles online.
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"We are working with photos of us teenagers"
His team would be at the origin of 25 arrests in the world including those of Vesoul and Dijon recently.
"We just create profiles of children on social networks, we invent a scenario, we create a child's story", explains the man at the head of "Team Moore", who insists on the legality of his approach: "You should know that we only work with photos of us, adolescents, or with software that rejuvenates photos of us".
In this way, "Team Moore" maintains control over the published photos of children.
"We are not going to look for these people [
the potential pedophiles, note
], we do not find them, we do not offer a date," he still supports.
"We are not white knights or hunters! We do not do justice ourselves."
The goal is to set up turnkey cases to ensure that the prosecutor cannot fail to open an investigation.
And the prosecutor of Vesoul, Emmanuel Dupic, does not take a dim view of this initiative because he believes that "justice must adapt to its time".
"There is no question that justice will refrain from using these beginnings of evidence to conduct investigations," he says.
However, the right attitude, adds the magistrate, is, in case of suspicion, to report the facts on the Pharos platform of the Ministry of the Interior.