France wants to prosecute the founder of a chat site linked to the Pelicot rapes

Soon after, was Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram Arrested By French police last summer and accused of failing to prevent illicit activity on the app, a French law professor specializing in cybersecurity received online messages from a man named Isaac Steidel.

“I would like to talk to you,” said an email signed by Mr. Steidel, who introduced himself as the founder of the online chat site Coco. “My case is very similar to the Telegram case, and so are the accusations.”

Michel Seguin, the professor, who shared copies of the letters with The New York Times, said he did not know Mr. Steidel, was not interested in helping him, and never responded. However, he was aware of Coco, a website where anonymous users can chat without leaving logs of the conversation.

French law enforcement authorities have linked the site to thousands of criminal cases, including… The last trial to Dominique Bellicot And 50 other men, most of whom were convicted of raping Mr. Bellicot’s ex-wife while she was heavily sedated, testified that they first met him on the chat site.

French authorities had already shut down the site in June, and messages to Mr. Seguin suggest that Mr. Steidel was concerned they would target him next.

Last week, they did just that.

As with Mr. Durov before him, Mr. Steidl has been placed under investigation On a host of criminal charges By the authorities using a 2023 law that made France a testing ground for an aggressive new approach to detaining the heads of online platforms. Personally responsible.

the New law It allows authorities to prosecute people who operate platforms and knowingly allow the exchange of illegal content, goods or services while also requiring users to remain Anonymously or during failure to retain certain user data.

While some experts warn that the new law remains relatively untested in courts, it appears to have given French authorities a powerful new tool.

“The noose is tightening on the managers of this type of platform,” said Nathalie Bouquet, a lawyer for the French branch of Innocence in Danger, a child protection organization that called for Coco’s closure.

Steidel, 44, did not respond to requests for an interview. But in the years before he was charged, he took steps that made it difficult for French law enforcement to reach him. He dropped his French citizenship, registered his website abroad and moved to Bulgaria.

Last week, he was ordered to pay bail of 100,000 euros ($102,000) and was banned from leaving France, with the obligation to check regularly at the local police station.

His lawyer, Julian Zanatta, said Steidle willingly traveled to France to cooperate when he was summoned by authorities. His lawyer said Mr Steidle would “prove his innocence” and was “terrified” by reports of crimes linked to his platform.

“He was upset to find out what people who had abused his site had done,” Mr. Zanatta said.

Coco was first registered in 2005 with a simple homepage and a nice ’90s aesthetic, with cracked, open coconuts. It advertises itself as a “cute” chat forum that doesn’t require users to create an account — they can access it by just providing gender, age, zip code, and nickname.

Users can chat live or join forums, and the site makes money by charging a small monthly fee for access to additional features. In the three months before it closed, the site’s monthly traffic reached more than 500,000 users, according to SameWeb estimates.

Most importantly, no logs of anonymous conversations are kept.

Over the years, authorities repeatedly tied the site To criminal activity, advocacy groups that combat child abuse and Homophobia He has become increasingly vocal in demanding that the authorities shut it down.

Marc Polman, head of a non-profit organization against cyber violence in France – who was questioned by police as part of the investigation into Coco’s case – said that when conducting research on the chat site by posing as a female user, he was contacted by dozens of male users within the site. Seconds of logging in, often by making sexual comments or requesting explicit photos.

French police and prosecutors say that from 2021 to 2024, the platform was involved in more than 23,000 cases involving 480 alleged victims, including allegations of child sexual abuse, pimping, prostitution, rape, drug trafficking, fraud and murders.

At Bellicott’s trial, Mr Bellicott said he met the other men on the website, in a private chat room called “Without her knowledge”. Most of the defendants denied ever seeing that chat room, but admitted they met Mr Bellicot on the site before moving on to other platforms.

Many of the defendants said at trial that they came to the site looking for paid sex, or to buy and sell drugs. Christian Lescol, a professional firefighter and long-time user of the site, told the court it began as a space to discuss hobbies such as chess or music.

But as the years went by, all the crooks and swindlers started coming to Coco, said Mr Lescoul, who was found guilty of aggravated rape of Ms Bellicot.

Even as the site’s popularity grew, its founder remained in the shadows.

Mr. Steidle seems to live offline but has a very low profile online. Facebook for him page empty. for him LinkedIn The page is bare. It is unclear how carefully Mr. Steidle manages the site on a day-to-day basis. Two people have been identified as site supervisors He was arrested in JulyBut the authorities did not provide details about their specific role.

Steidel, who was born in the Vaucluse region and grew up in the Var region in southeastern France, graduated from the computer science program at the University of Engineering in Toulon in 2003, the university’s head of communications said.

Mr. Steidle owned the domain name coco.fr through a company called Zenco that was registered in Toulon in 2011. In 2022, during the investigation that preceded Pelicot’s trial, the examining magistrate’s office contacted Zenco to request data related to the case. But she received no response, according to an overview of the case by the judge.

Soon after, Ms. Steidl began withdrawing his company, website and herself from France.

By October 2022, coco.fr Traffic has been redirected to coco.ggAccording to Internet Archives in the French National Library, indicating that it was recorded on Guernsey, an island in the English Channel.

Then, in 2023, Zenco closed, according to public business records. In April of the same year, Steidel renounced his French citizenship, government records show. His lawyer says he is an Italian citizen.

At some point, it moved to Bulgaria, where a company called Vinci LTD linked to the site in March 2024, according to information collected by Domaintools. Vinci is owned and operated by Mr. Steidel, according to Bulgarian company registration records.

But in June, after an 18-month investigation that spanned Europe, French authorities shut down the site. Two of the site’s servers in Germany were confiscated, bank accounts in several European countries were frozen, and police confiscated 5 million euros. Mr. Steidel was questioned by French law enforcement officials in Bulgaria, although he was not charged at the time.

France’s 2023 law — and the creation of a specialized national cybercrime unit in 2019 — allowed French prosecutors to take a less piecemeal approach in their targeting of online platforms suspected of allowing illicit activity to flourish, said Mr. Seguin, the expert contacted by Mr. Steidel.

“Before 2023, you couldn’t do it in one fell swoop, and it was broken down case by case,” said Mr. Sijan, who teaches at the college. Sorbonne University Paris North.

Lawyer Bouquet said that the new law “greatly facilitates” the work of the police because “mere knowledge of the illicit nature of the content justifies criminal liability on the part of the official.”

But some critics said that applying the new crime to Mr. Steidel’s website may be going too far, and that although the law allows prosecutors to bring charges quickly, future convictions are uncertain.

Alexandre Archambault, a lawyer with experience in digital and cyber security cases, noted that the first conviction using the new law, In Novemberwas against the creator and administrator of the Telegram group that shared child sexual abuse material — not Telegram itself or its executives.

“Is this broad interpretation of the crime consistent with European law?” said Mr. Archambault. “i doubt it.”

Mr Steidl’s lawyer said his client was being unfairly targeted.

“There are regularly sites that are diverted from their purpose to commit crimes, and those responsible for these sites are never prosecuted for complicity,” he said.

Under French and European rules, platforms hosting online content cannot be held responsible for what users post, nor are they obligated to preventively monitor any illegal content.

But they also need procedures to allow people to report such content to be removed and ensure a certain level of cooperation with the authorities – which was not the case for Coco, according to French prosecutors, who said he showed a “sickening lack of moderation.”

However, for now, some rights groups say shutting down the site wasn’t enough.

“The day they shut down Coco, I sent an email to the police with a list of more than 100 similar websites,” said Mr. Bohlman, the nonprofit’s president. “It’s like saying that closing a drug center in Marseille solves the drug trafficking problem in France.”

“Coco is the tree that hides the forest,” he said.

Liz Alderman Contributed reporting from Paris, and Michael H. Killer and Jennifer Valentino-DeVries From New York.