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French police have arrested nearly a hundred people in connection to a large international pedophile ring following an investigation launched last year by the National Gendarmerie.

Gendarmes announced Thursday that they have seized 122 computers, 152 smartphones, and 330 other digital media devices containing 375,000 photos and 156,000 videos totalling 217 terabytes of data as it dismantled a large-scale international child pornography operation.

Lefigaro.fr reports: The investigation, which began in 2023, culminated in a coordinated operation in France that took place from December 9 to 19, 2024. Among the individuals arrested and taken into custody, 36 were already known for sexual offenses against minors or “consulting sites featuring minors ,” according to a press release from the gendarmerie. All of those arrested are adult men aged 18 to 74, except one, a 16-year-old minor. The majority of the suspects admitted to the facts.

The searches uncovered 375,000 photos and 156,000 videos, while 122 computers, 330 digital media and 152 smartphones were seized, containing 217 TB of data.

The profile of the accused

“The accused mainly live in the regions of Île-de-France, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes or Grand Est. One of them worked as the director of a youth information association, one was a sports instructor, and a mayor’s deputy is also involved ,” the authorities continued.

The investigations began with the search of the phone of an individual living in Hauts-de-Seine, accused of habitually viewing pornographic images. Cyber-investigators from the Versailles research section (SR), with the assistance of the National Cyber ​​Unit (UNC), discovered by tracing the thread the existence of several discussion groups on the encrypted messaging service Signal, whose name is unequivocal about their subject. 

“What is hidden behind these forums is this whole galaxy of pedocriminals who can potentially be extremely dangerous because they can also be predatory ,” Colonel Hervé Petry of the UNC explained to AFP. “The fight against pedocriminality is an area in which the gendarmerie has been very invested, very committed, for decades. Thanks to the rise of social networks, it has taken on a truly extremely worrying dimension since it has exploded: before social networks, it took these people several years before they could access this type of image. And even more to approach children ,” he further explained. “Today, with social networks, there is an “increase in supply” since images and videos can be exchanged extremely easily (…) Now, we can connect at any time ,” according to him.