The Boy From Brazil

In his novel Sacrifice, Andrew Vachss says, "Slime can slide, but it can't hide."  This describes Marcos Teia perfectly.

Marcos Teia's profiles have been shut down so often that he's set up a number of them with different names and avatars.  In the past, he's been "Marcos Souza" and "Marcos Robson" as well as "Marcos Teia."  He's diversified even further, appearing as Marcella Souza, Servidor Teia,  Marcos Teia Servidor, and Marcos Teia.  But his most active profile at the moment would be "Marcos Garcia."

So it's probably not surprising that Marcos Teia would be an admin of a private group called "xxxpedo" along with "Marcos Fernandes", presumably another one of Teia's alter egos.  According to our sources, this is one of the worst private groups they've ever seen.  In addition to posting numerous vile images, Marcos Teia is apparently offering child porn videos for sale. 

Another One Bites the Dust

Jerry Cannon, the user we knew as "Terry Lewis" has also been arrested.  He was quite persistent, and more than a little creepy.  This is his profile picture, which was recycled in more than one account.  We were aware of 7 accounts, and the news story said that he had 13.

A lot of the users on his friends list had profile pictures depicting girls and young women, and he was quite chatty.  He kept a collection of child pornography in his private albums and apparently hoped if he granted his friends access, they'd reciprocate by taking "private" pictures of themselves.  Of course, most of his Facebook friends probably weren't the attractive young girls in the Facebook profile photos.  One of them was an author investigating human trafficking, and another turned him into the FBI.  Then again, it's also unlikely that he really owned a "multi-million dollar buisness."

We contacted Kentucky ICAC about him, and they were responsive and professional.  However, the FBI had begun an investigation when the other Facebook user reported him.  It turns out that "Terry Lewis" was actually Jerry L Cannon, formerly the pastor at God's House in Dry Ridge, KY.  The news story is at http://blog.al.com/live/2011/02/kentucky_pastor_facebook_pornography.html and the criminal complaint is at http://www.scribd.com/doc/49175841/tlewis .

John Wilson Arrested

Via Bangor Daily News, John Wilson of Greenbush, ME was arrested yesterday on child pornography charges.

John Wilson, 23, was arrested Thursday afternoon on a charge of possessing sexually explicit material, a Class C felony, after state police raided his Middle River Road home and seized his computers and cell phones, Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland said Friday.

“They found [sexually explicit] images immediately and then seized the equipment,” he said. He said Wilson’s hard drives now are being analyzed by the Maine State Police Computer Crimes Unit in Vassalboro.

According to McCausland, investigators believe that Wilson posted child pornography on as many as 15 Facebook accounts he created over the past year. Wilson’s alleged criminal activity was reported to authorities by personnel from the social networking site as well as members of the public over the past month.

He didn't seem like the subtle type.

Examiner Article

We were recently mentioned in an Examiner article by Raymond Bechard, who has written extensively about human trafficking.

To be fair to Facebook, dealing with abusive accounts is a hard problem and they've been making some effort.  They've got a system in place that seems to be automatically nuking a number of profiles.  However, the bad guys just come right back with new accounts, and I'd doubt that there's any mechanism in the "auto-nuke" system to report predatory users to law enforcement.  If not, that could mean that the only consequences some of the people are experiencing for soliciting and posting child pornography are having a Facebook account shut down.

Here's an interesting article from last year about Facebook not notifying Australian LE about child pornography:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/facebook-failed-to-tell-police-about-paedophile-porn-ring-20100826-13ual.html
It says that someone had sent Facebook 10 messages telling them about the CP rings and nothing had happened.  That was likely more about the inability to process user messages than deliberate refusal to do anything about child pornography.

Facebook's reporting mechanisms are limited.  For example, imagine you see a profile of of a man hinting at sexually abusing his daughter.  How do you go about reporting that to Facebook?  Note that there is no "child exploitation" option anywhere.  If the profile picture contains actual nudity or pornography, that's reportable, but if they're just using a photo of a child to signal their interests, no dice.  "Inappropriate profile information" is limited to hate or violence, and there's nothing for profiles that refer to pedophilia or child porn.  There's also no free text field that allows you to provide additional information.

Realistically, Facebook has millions of users.  If you assume that 1% of accounts are abusive in some way but there are 100 million accounts ... well, that's potentially 1 million abusive accounts.  That's why Facebook wants to automate as much as it can -- they have to.  However, I would like to see an improved reporting system that allowed users to specifically flag child exploitation and other things that are problems but don't fit neatly into their existing system.  For example, how would you go about reporting a profile or page that seemed to be advertising an escort service (human trafficking)?

Paolo Ghelardini

Who was this "Paolo Constantino" who clicked "like" on the comment about him raping young girls?

Well, he looks a lot like a guy called Paolo Gherlardini, an Italian illustrator.  Let's take a look at his profile.

He even lists "paologhelardini" in his contact information.

He argues that Romania must be a civilized country because the government provides cable TV with porn.  In a recent CNN blog post, David Batstone called Romania a "global center for human trafficking."

According to the Wikipedia article on Eva Ionesco, there were some controversial erotic photographs taken of her when she was five years old.

He is proud of his involvement with "Lolita" magazine, which reportedly rewarded readers who submitted child porn for publication with free magazines.

He also talked about his time in the Netherlands.

"I recall Red Light Center in Amsterdam, The Amstel, Casa Rosso, Rokin Road...Oh...what a fine country is Holland, I love, I miss! Pity Pornoshops now are deleted......I know!  But in 1969 I remember you said_ let‘s live pornography...then when we shall be satisfied she will desapppear! You right! First Lolita Magazine and Chick by my lost friend editor Joop Wilhelmus born in Dordrecht (and killed in Rotterdam 1997 by a bastard catholic), I was one of his photographers and scienist for Super8 movies! My glory, my dream! This is freedom, this is civilisation! I am proud of you dutch people! Long life to you!"

"Lella" wasn't his only victim.  He also bragged about exploiting other young girls.

"She is one of my best lilmodels! Now she is 10 yo, but she began to do sex since 2 ys! She likes so much analsex and piss!"

"Barbara my model! She began sex at only 4 years! Now she is 17, a real slut nymphomaniac!"

Given Romania's problems with human trafficking and the number of vulnerable children there, Ghelardini could probably find a number of young victims.

"Ls magazine" also published child pornography, and seems to be a popular child pornography keyword.

He thinks that the (redacted) image posted by Marcos Teia would be better without the swimsuit.

He can't seem to get enough child pornography.

Many of the child pornography traders have gotten kicked off Facebook and returned with new accounts.  Ghelardini is no exception.

His next account used the screen name "Paulo Constantinescu." 

"My alter-ego Paul Constatin banned! Ahahah!! I don‘t care a rap!  Problem is for my friends notfor me because I have an arkiv with + of 10.000 pthc pics and 1000 vids! My mails no one, nteiher God, can delete! Fuck asshole Facebook ad idiots snakes fake friends!"

He seemed to think that email would be a safer approach:

"If you wanna watch them in sexual activity no limits call my mails!  Proud to satisfy you! By mail we are in security!"

Ghelardini has a twisted approach to theology and philosophy.  Many others would consider producing child pornography to be a mortal sin.

The comment where he invokes the name of God has to be one of the grossest violations of the Second Commandment I've ever seen.

Will Romanian law enforcement ever do anything about Ghelardini?  We can only hope.

Update: there have been some anonymous comments posted claiming that these Facebook profiles were created by somebody else.  One of these accounts posted this image, which looks a lot like him:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC70e0w43SYxfEtfESfcN_00W6e1XtiLOh2FwWWmujVMSBwqHy6uojf7uFtLXifAxCJAIeM_nHMzyIP44YYHPt3pbcpGJlO2hLihhOxmfNnOY73-gTL4qNRW33jeon5PpHe8FJH_khASny/s1600/paolo_yuk2.png

For obvious reasons, we redacted the image, but it's hard to understand how an imposter would have gotten ahold of the original.

Hardcore

As of 8:00 yesterday evening, the closed group "hardcore" had 30 members.  The description was "for the true pedos that love little girls please post pics, vids, and stories."

The Pain Players

There are numerous profiles with obvious sadomasochistic interests, but most of these folks seem to play only with other consenting adults.  However, as we saw in an earlier entry, that may not always be the case.

Harald Schneider expresses interest in "spanking my kids" and a number of other things, and his "About" information apparently translates to "Family.  3 children.  Strictly."  His profile photo (which is redacted here) shows a young girl bent over a table.

Below is his photo album, which is also redacted here.  The image in the middle seemed to be especially popular with his friends.

Harald's friend Max Lehrer had quite a collection of drawings.  The one below displayed a Bible verse and attracted some obviously prurient comments.  This isn't too surprising; Amazon shows that some "Christian" books on child-rearing that advocate corporal punishment are popular with the BDSM crowd.