“Coco.gg, chat without registration”
, soberly indicates the platform on its home page. This meeting site with its shabby design, several times pointed out by associations for being a den of sexual and criminal predators and an ambush tool, sadly returns to the news with the murder of Philippe in Grande-Synthe. The 22-year-old fell into the trap of two teenagers aged 14 and 15 who created a fake profile on the free dating site Coco, posing as an underage girl. According to their version, they wanted to
“punish”
Philippe for having responded to the ad.
This platform, which looks like an amateur site, originally French but now established on the Channel Island of Guernsey, has been the scene of multiple sordid and sometimes deadly affairs in recent years. It was on Coco that between 2011 and 2020, a septuagenarian suggested to dozens of strangers that they rape his previously drugged wife. The mother only became aware of the facts after the police discovered hundreds of videos on her husband's computer, as part of a search triggered by another accusation. Some 51 men, aged 20 to 68, are to be tried in this case next September.
It is also on this site that the singer Richard Dewitte, sentenced last September to three years in prison for corruption of a minor, exchanged with a certain
“Camille2009”
who presented herself as a 13-year-old girl. After several days of exchanging messages with sexual connotations, the interpreter of
I still dreamed of her
arranged to meet the teenager in the parking lot of a supermarket. It was not the young girl who was waiting for him, but gendarmes from the Paris Research section, belonging to the personal crimes division.
Countless ambushes
The stories of ambushes with sometimes deadly outcomes in which Coco was the vector are countless. Me Caty Richard, lawyer in Pontoise, charges the site with being
a “vector”
for criminals, allowing them
to “follow through on their intentions”.
“It is because of this site that the trap closed on the father of my clients
,” declared to BFMTV the lawyer who defended the children of Michel Sollossi, a man stabbed at his home with an attempted murder. slit throat in January 2018, a few hours after finding at Pontoise station a man he had met on Coco whom he had brought to his home.
It must be said that this site, which is very easy to access, does not carry out any verification during initial registration. After simply entering a nickname, gender, age and postal code, you open on an uninviting home page with a largely outdated design. Without any illustration, it offers filters by theme on a left column, such as
“bg”
,
“drugs and addictions”
,
“consoles and gaming”
... or other more crude ones, such as
“infidel women”. »
(sic),
“trav slut”
, up to propositions with clearly pedophilic connotations, such as the
“high school girl”
tab . On the right column is a list of members residing nearby, with nickname, age and city. A Premium version is also offered at 5 euros per day, 11 euros per month or 44 euros per year, for greater search power and preview access to photos.
850,000 users in March
The multiplication of these facts has given rise to warnings from several associations. Guest of
CNews
this Saturday following the murder of Philippe, Mathias Darmon, the lawyer for “Innocence in danger”, an association for the defense of childhood, recalled that the organization had been calling for the closure of the site since 2013.
“We can pretending to be someone who is 12 years old when you are 52,”
pointed out Mathias Darmon, who underlines the high number of visitors to the site, with some 850,000 users connected in France in the month of March alone.
“They claim to be the first cat in France
,” notes the lawyer.
A petition was launched in 2016 by “Innocence in Danger” to demand its closure. It has now collected 5,000 signatures.
“The site has been associated with police or legal affairs for almost as long as it has existed
,” denounces the association.
“He is known for his lack of moderation which allows the worst excesses to proliferate. This is no longer possible"
.
Same request from the SOS Homophobia association, after in Marseille, a homosexual man was the subject of an ambush via the dating site last October.
“There is no filter to register. It’s a den of predators,”
denounced Véronique Godet, co-president of SOS Homophobia, to AFP on Friday.