Snapchat accused by New Mexico of facilitating sexual exploitation of children

Design features allegedly make Snapchat a favored platform of sexual criminals targeting kids, according to a lawsuit filed by New Mexico Thursday against Snap, the company that operates the popular social media app.

An undercover investigation by the state found Snapchat has crafted "an environment where predators can easily target children through sextortion schemes and other forms of sexual abuse," Attorney General Raúl Torrez stated in a news release. 

Sextortion is a rapidly growing crime that involves a person pretending to be a peer coercing minors to send explicit images or videos of themselves, and then threatening to distribute the material unless they are paid. The scam has resulted in numerous teen suicides, the AG noted.

"Snap has misled users into believing that photos and videos sent on their platform will disappear, but predators can permanently capture this content and they have created a virtual yearbook of child sexual images that are traded, sold and stored indefinitely," Torrez said.

The New Mexico Department of Justice found a vast network of dark web sites that share stolen, nonconsensual sexual images from Snap, with more than 10,000 records related to Snap and child sexual abuse material in the last year alone, it said. That includes information related to minors younger than 13 being sexual assaulted, according to the agency. 

Investigators set up a decoy Snapchat account for a 14-year-old named Heather, through which it found and traded messages with predatory accounts including ones named "child.rape" and "pedo_lover10," the state said. 

In October of last year, Alegandro Marquez pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 years in prison for raping an 11-year-old girl he met through Snapchat, the lawsuit and state officials noted. 

Snap said it is reviewing the complaint and would respond in court. 

"We have been working diligently to find, remove and report bad actors, educate our community and give teens, as well as parents and guardians, tools to help them be safe online," a Snap spokesperson said. The company has invested hundreds of millions of dollars over the past several years to increase safety, the spokesperson said.

More than 20 million U.S. teens use Snapchat and half of all teens in the country use the app every day, according to the suit.

New Mexico in December filed a similar suit against Meta Platforms and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.