Case filed against Spanish man accused by US of distributing child pornography on Facebook in a possible case of ‘spoofing’.
The Court of Instruction number 2 of Torrelaguna (Madrid) has determined the provisional dismissal of the case opened at the request of the United States against a Spanish citizen, H. M. T., accused of distributing child pornography files on the Internet.
The investigation was initiated in June 2022 when the National Police received a complaint from the. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). The United States, through the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, due to suspicions that this Spanish citizen was allegedly committing a crime of prostitution and corruption of minors.
Specifically, this 46-year-old resident of the Madrid town of Navalafuente was denounced for distributing 15 files with harsh images of child sexual exploitation through the social network Facebook. According to NCMEC, the IP address from which the crime was committed corresponded to that of this male resident of Navalafuente. It was the company Meta, parent company of Facebook, which alerted the US authorities.
After receiving the complaint from the USA, the Technological Brigade of the National Police opened an investigation to collect the necessary data for the indictment of H. M. T., accessing his email accounts, social networks and all his data stored on the internet.
Likewise, last November, a search was carried out at the defendant’s home in Navalafuente, a small municipality in the mountains of Madrid, where he lives with his wife and two children. In that search, the agents of the Central Cybercrime Unit seized the following items a computer, two hard disks, a mobile telephone and various pen drivesThe subsequent analysis did not find any files involving the sexual exploitation of children.
His computer was open and unlocked
The defense of the defendant, exercised by Ospina Abogados, emphasizes that the defendant. facilitated the agents’ access to all this documentation. “My client’s equipment was open, without passwords, they have nothing to hide,” it can be read in the preliminary proceedings.
It also underlines the fact that the files of child pornography were distributed from a modified IP address from a VPNThis indicates that someone may have used your client’s own network to access his Facebook profile and send the files under investigation.
He also alleges that the defendant does not know how these files were sent and that he had not used his Facebook account for seven years, pointing out that the offenders could have used his IP in what is known as spoofinga form of spoofing in which one person, institution or device impersonates another to commit a crime.
