Police officers in Oslo, Norway, work at the scene of a crime in a file photo. Stian Lysberg Solum/NTB/AFP via Getty Images
The son of a former mayoral candidate and city councillor from Edmonton is one of 28 people arrested as part of a global child sexual exploitation investigation.
Forty-year-old Rocco Caterina has been charged with possessing child sexual abuse materials after he was arrested at his home in Stony Plain, Alta. on May 27, according to a press release from the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams (ALERT) Internet Child Exploitation unit.
His arrest was part of a criminal probe known as Operation Torch, which is spearheaded by Norway’s National Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) and involves law enforcement agencies globally, including from Canada, the ALERT teams said in a press release.
Rocco Caterina is the son of Tony Caterina, a veteran city councillor in Edmonton who ran for mayor last year. He ran for office in 2017, placing second in the Edmonton Ward 4 election, and previously served as a staff member in his father’s office at city hall.
Caterina is accused of paying for access to a dark web service to access child sexual abuse materials. The allegation has not yet been tested in court.
He has been released from custody and is set to appear in court on July 15.
Operation Torch resulted in the arrest of 28 suspects in 14 countries: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, Czechia, Germany, Denmark, the UK, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, and Sweden.
The NCIS began tracking the use of Monero, a decentralized cryptocurrency, last year to identify people who have paid for access to abuse material, the Norwegian police force said in a press release.
The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) said its investigators believe the suspects used cryptocurrency to pay for access to dark web forums, where they could download or view videos of children being abused.
The suspects, who range in age from 22 to 54, will face charges for storing, acquiring, and sharing child sexual abuse material, Europol said in a press release.
ALERT Staff Sgt. Alison Church said it is “incredibly complex” for police to trace these types of crimes. She said international police used new investigative methods and received help from the FBI over a period of two years.
“We’re talking about a cryptocurrency transaction that took two large police agencies to identify and delve into and confirm who that user was,” she told reporters during a recent press conference in Edmonton.
A total of 460 items were seized as part of the investigation, including electronic devices and crypto wallets.
