French police shut down chat website reviled as 'den of predators'

French law enforcement has shut down the chat website Coco, which authorities said has allowed offenders to coordinate child sexual abuse, rapes, homicides and other serious crimes.

As of Tuesday, the website is no longer available and only displays a seizure notice from the French national police.

🚨 Closure of the coco site by #JUNALCO of @parquetdeParis, @CyberGEND, @ComCyberMI the ONAF national anti-fraud office and cooperation with other European countries through @Eurojust pic.twitter.com/15TehFBQeo

— Parquet de Paris (@parquetdeParis) June 25, 2024

According to a statement by the Paris prosecutor’s office, the investigation into Coco’s operation was initiated in December 2023. France collaborated with law enforcement from Bulgaria, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Hungary.

French newspaper Le Figaro reportedciting anonymous sources close to the matter, that the website’s servers were seized in Germany, and its operator, a French citizen, was arrested in a different country, while his wife was arrested in the south of France.

Recorded Future News could not verify this information. The Paris prosecutor’s office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Coco is called “a den of predators” in France and has previously raised concerns among human rights organizations, LGBTQ+ activists, and child protection associations.

Last year, the French organization SOS Homophobie called for the police to shut down the website, as it was reportedly used by criminals to organize attacks targeting the local gay community, including the brutal ambush of a man with bats and sticks. Five Coco users allegedly carried out that attack.

Still no response from @BCouillard33 faced with the worrying increase in ambushes #homophobes in our country (1/3) https://t.co/LA0Na2OlfT

— SOS homophobie (@SOShomophobie) October 30, 2023

Several local child protection associations, including Innocence in Danger, have been campaigning against the website since 2013.

“It’s a dangerous site — any user can access it without any filter and without any moderation,” said Mathias Darmon, the lawyer at Innocence in Danger.

According to him, at least 850,000 users had accessed  Coco in France as of 2023. The website belongs to a Bulgarian company and is hosted on the Anglo-Norman island of Guernsey, which explains its.gg domain rather than a French .fr domain, Darmon said in an interview.

Several other French media outlets, including Le Monde, also reported that the website is owned by a Bulgaria-based company but was previously controlled by other entities.

Coco marketed itself as “a chat site without registration.” It only asked its users for gender, age, postal code, and nickname. This “notorious lack of moderation” was one of the reasons why the website was so popular among cybercriminals, the Paris prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday.

Over the past three years, French police initiated more than 23,000 judicial proceedings related to the Coco platform. Seventy prosecutors’ offices across the country have reported cases involving the platform, affecting 480 victims. For example, the website was used by a French citizen to recruit men to rape his wife.

Earlier in April, a 22-year-old man was beaten to death by two minors who admitted to the police that they had “set up a meeting” with the victim via Coco, posing as an underage girl.