The platform is implicated in several criminal cases, particularly in the tragedy of Grande-Synthe.
The Paris prosecutor’s office announced the closure of the controversial dating site Coco on Tuesday, June 25. This closure was carried out under the authority of the national jurisdiction for combating organized crime (Junalco) of the Paris prosecutor’s office, in connection with the Ministry of the Interior’s cyber command (ComCyberMI), the gendarmerie’s cyber unit, the national anti-fraud office (ONAF) “and cooperation with other European countries by Eurojust,” the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
This is not an administrative closure, but a judicial seizure of the site’s servers, the Paris prosecutor’s office told franceinfo. A gendarmerie banner has appeared on the site’s home page since this morning, indicating that “this site has been closed by the Directorate General of Customs and Indirect Rights and the national gendarmerie, under the authority of JUNALCO of the Paris prosecutor’s office.” The same text is written in English.
The preliminary investigation conducted by the Paris prosecutor’s office began last December, first gathering all ongoing procedures in France related to the Coco site. According to a judicial source, 23,000 procedures were identified. In addition to the site’s closure, investigators are questioning four people on Tuesday, in France and abroad, notably in Bulgaria, according to a source close to the case.
The discussion and dating site coco.gg, launched nearly 20 years ago, is implicated in several criminal cases, including the tragedy of Grande-Synthe. It is on this site that a young man, Philippe, fell victim to a deadly ambush. This site is also linked to a case of rapes in the Vaucluse between 2011 and 2020, when a retiree is accused of delivering his wife, unknowingly sedated, to dozens of strangers “recruited” on Coco to rape her.
In recent years, to avoid detection, coco.fr has become coco.gg, a domain name registered in Guernsey, a British island. However, according to franceinfo, it is Belgian servers, within the European Union, that host Coco.
