Paedophile arrest with international impact after online operation by South Australian police JACET team
Adelaide paedophile Ruecha Tokputza, arrested after a major international operation by South Australian police's JACET (joint anti-child exploitation team ).
South Australian police’s role in the joint anti-child exploitation team has had an international impact from closing the case on an Adelaide paedophile Ruecha Tokputza, whose offending was one of the worst in Australian legal history.
Tokputza was arrested in 2018 and sentenced the next year to 40 years’ jail, the longest sentence in South Australian legal history and surpassing that for child sex offences by former Families South Australia carer Shannon McCoole.
Tokputza pleaded guilty to 51 charges, including aggravated indecent assault, sexual intercourse with a child and engaging in sexual intercourse with a child in Adelaide and Thailand between 2011 and 2018. He was noticed by Thai and Interpol operations through his IP addressed to another paedophile website administrator Montri Salangam.
South Australia’s joint anti-child exploitation team and the Australian federal police then uncovered Tokputza’s offending against a child in Australia and another in Thailand, from mobile phone images.
A trawl through about 900,000 images, video and computer files uncovered his other offences. This has a flow-on benefit to Interpol, Europol and law agencies in 60 other countries that saw 50 Thai child-sex abuse victims rescued plus 100 worldwide. It also confirmed other arrests, including Tokputza’s Thai boyfriend and Salangam.
Started in 2015, the joint anti-child exploitation team (JACET), within South Australian police’s special crimes investigations branch, is the most coordinated attack on online predators by SAPOL. Up to 2020, it has made 555 investigations, leading to 223 indiviudals being charged.
The team is a supervisor, investigations senior sergeant, six investigators and an intelligence office, along with four Australian federal police members and a special digital forensics officer. It is one of five similar teams in other states.