Turin police have arrested a 40-year-old local doctor under a pre-trial detention order issued by the city’s preliminary investigations judge (GIP). The suspect faces charges of producing multimedia content through the exploitation of minors and possessing a significant quantity of child sexual abuse material downloaded online. The judicial allegations conclude a two-year investigation by Italy’s National Centre for Combating Online Child Pornography (Cncpo), part of the Postal and Cyber Security Police Service, aided by the Turin Cyber Security Operations Centre. Investigators uncovered the doctor’s activities within dark web pedophile communities over a 12-year period, where he was reportedly highly active.
Authorities successfully linked online pseudonyms to the doctor’s real identity. This breakthrough led the Rome judicial authority, initially overseeing the case, to issue a warrant for searches of the physician’s home, person, and electronic devices. Seizure and forensic analysis of his computers detailed his illicit activities, specifically his participation in underground web communities and the production of material via chats with minors, whom he met in person. Investigators also discovered the doctor, whose leisure activities involved regular sports contact with adolescents, cultivated connections with others interested in exchanging child sexual abuse material, both within the dark web and on peer-to-peer chat platforms.
Among the doctor’s contacts was a priest from the Brescia province. This priest, arrested by Postal Police investigators last May, had collaborated with the doctor in plans to create an exclusively Italian online group dedicated to pedopornographic content.