Shortly after Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested by French police last summer and charged with failing to prevent illegal activity on the app, a French law professor specializing in cybersecurity I received an online message from a man named Isaac Steidl.
Mr. Steidl, who introduced himself as the founder of the online chat site Coco, signed the email: “I would like to talk to you.” “My case is very similar to the Telegram case and the charges are similar.”
Michel Sejan, a professor who shared a copy of the message with The New York Times, said he did not know Steidl, had no interest in helping him and did not respond. But he was familiar with Coco, a website that allows anonymous users to chat without leaving a record of their conversations.
French law enforcement had linked the site to thousands of criminal cases. That includes the recent trial of Dominic Perico and 50 other men. Most of the men were convicted of raping Mr. Perico’s now ex-wife while heavily sedated, and they testified: The first time I met him was on a chat site.
French authorities had already shut down the website in June, and messages to Mr. Sejan suggested they feared Mr. Steidl would target him next.
Last week, they did.
Like Mr. Durov before him, Mr. Steidl was also investigated by authorities for numerous criminal charges. Primarily using the 2023 law, it has made France a testing ground for aggressive new approaches to holding those responsible for online platforms personally accountable.
of new law Enable authorities to prosecute those who operate the platform and knowingly allow the exchange of illegal content, goods and services, while requiring users to remain. While anonymous or failing to retain certain user data.
Although some experts warn that the new law remains largely untested in court, it gives French authorities a seemingly powerful new tool.
“The ropes are getting tighter for the administrators of these types of platforms,” said Nathalie Baquet, a lawyer for the French branch of child protection group Innocence in Danger, which had called for Coco to be shut down.
Mr. Steidl, 44, did not respond to requests for an interview. But in the years leading up to his indictment, he took steps to make it difficult for French law enforcement to access him. He renounced his French citizenship, registered a website abroad and moved to Bulgaria.
Last week, he was ordered to pay bail of 100,000 euros ($102,000), must report to a local police station regularly and is prohibited from leaving France.
His lawyer, Julian Zanatta, said Steidl was willing to go to France to cooperate when he was called by authorities. Steidl intended to “prove his innocence” and was “horrified” by reports of crimes linked to his platform, his lawyer said.
“He was upset to learn what had been done by people who had abused his site,” Zanatta said.
Coco was first registered in 2005 and features a simple homepage and cute 1990s design featuring a cracked coconut. The forum advertised itself as a “great” chat forum where users did not need to create an account and could access it by simply entering their gender, age, postal code and pen name.
Users could chat directly and participate in forums, and the site made money by charging a small monthly fee for access to additional features. SimplyWeb estimates that the site’s monthly traffic exceeded 500,000 users in the three months leading up to its closure.
Importantly, no records of anonymous conversations were kept.
For many years, authorities repetition tied site Advocacy organizations fighting criminal activity and child abuse; homophobia There were growing calls for authorities to shut it down.
Marc Poelman, head of a French non-profit organization against cyber violence (who was interviewed by police as part of the investigation into the Koko incident), investigated a chat site posing as a female user and found that dozens of people said a male user had contacted him internally. They often make sexual comments or ask for explicit photos.
From 2021 to 2024, French police and public prosecutors have announced that 20,000 cases involving 480 victims, including charges of child sexual abuse, pimping, prostitution, rape, drug trafficking, fraud, and murder, will be filed against them. It was announced that the platform was involved in more than 3,000 cases.
At Pericot’s trial, he said he met other men in a private chat room on the website called “Without Her Knowledge.” Most of the defendants denied ever seeing that particular chat room, but admitted they met Mr. Pericot on the site before moving on to other platforms.
At trial, several defendants said they accessed the website to solicit paid sex or buy and sell drugs. Christian Rescole, a professional firefighter and long-time user of the website, told the court that the website started as a space to discuss hobbies such as chess and music.
“But as the years went on, all the looters and scammers started coming here,” said Lescole, who was convicted of aggravated rape of Ms. Pericot.
Even as the website gained notoriety, its founder remained in the shadows.
Although Steidl apparently makes a living using the Internet, he has a very low profile online. his facebook page is empty. his linkedin Pages are minimal. It’s unclear how closely Steidl managed the website on a day-to-day basis. The two people identified as the site’s moderators are: arrested in julyHowever, authorities did not provide details about its exact role.
Steidl was born in Vaucluse in southeastern France, grew up in Var, and graduated from the computer science program at Toulon’s Polytechnic Institute in 2003, according to the school’s head of communications.
Mr. Steidl owned the coco.fr domain name through a company called Zenco, which was registered in Toulon in 2011. In 2022, during the investigation preceding the Pericot trial, the Office of the Trial Judge contacted Zenco requesting data related to the case. But no response was received, according to the judge’s summary of the case.
Shortly thereafter, Steidl began withdrawing his company, website, and himself from France.
By October 2022, coco.fr was redirecting traffic to coco.ggaccording to internet archive This indicates that the book was registered in Guernsey, an island in the English Channel.
Zenco then closed in 2023, according to publicly available business records. Mr. Steidl renounced his French citizenship in April of that year, according to government records. His lawyer said he is an Italian citizen.
According to information gathered by Domaintools, at some point he moved to Bulgaria and in March 2024, a company called Vinci LTD was associated with the site. According to , Vinci is owned and managed by Mr. Steidl. Bulgarian company registration records.
However, French authorities shut down the site in June after an 18-month investigation across Europe. Two of the site’s servers were seized in Germany, bank accounts were frozen in several European countries, and police seized 5 million euros. French law enforcement officials interrogated Steidl in Bulgaria, but no charges were filed at the time.
Expert Sejan, who was contacted by Steidl, said France’s 2023 law and the creation of a national cybercrime unit in 2019 will allow French prosecutors to be more selective when targeting suspect online platforms. He said that it was now possible to take a non-targeted approach. Allowing illegal activities to flourish.
“Until 2023, we couldn’t achieve it all at once, and it was broken down on a case-by-case basis,” said Sejan, who teaches at the university. Sorbonne University Paris North.
Lawyer Baquet said the new law would “significantly facilitate” police work, as “knowledge of the illegal nature of the content alone justifies criminal liability for the administrator.”
But some critics say applying new charges to Mr. Steidl’s website may be overreaching, saying the law allows prosecutors to bring charges quickly but leaves future convictions uncertain. did.
Alexandre Archambault, a lawyer with expertise in digital and cybersecurity cases, said this was the first conviction under the new law. in novemberwas not against Telegram itself or its executives, but against the creators and administrators of Telegram groups that shared child sexual abuse material.
“Is this broad interpretation of the crime in accordance with European law?” Archambault asked. “I doubt it.”
Steidl’s lawyer said his client was being unfairly singled out.
“There are regularly sites that deviate from their purpose and commit criminal acts, but those responsible for these sites are never charged with conspiracy,” he said.
Under French and European regulations, platforms that host content online cannot be held responsible for what their users publish and are not obliged to proactively monitor illegal content.
But there also needs to be a process to allow people to flag such content for removal, and a process to ensure some degree of cooperation with authorities. French prosecutors say that is not the case with Coco, which shows a “notorious lack of moderation.”
But for now, some advocacy groups say shutting down websites is not enough.
“The day we shut down Coco, I emailed the police a list of over 100 similar websites,” said Pohlman, the nonprofit’s president. “It’s like saying that closing the Marseille drug exchange will solve France’s drug trafficking problem.”
“Coco is the tree that hides the forest,” he said.
Liz Alderman Contributed report from Paris. Michael H. Keller and Jennifer Valentino-DeVries From New York.
