A French cybersecurity executive, Samuel H., was fined 2,000 euros and cleared of the most serious charge in a case involving an attempted purchase of child pornography content, following a hearing by the 20th correctional chamber of the Nanterre judicial court on Monday, September 7. The judges confirmed that an offense had occurred but found no "special intent" to achieve a specific harmful result. They also "exceptionally" excluded Samuel H. from the automated judicial registry of perpetrators of sexual or violent offenses (Fijais), noting no sexual danger associated with the individual. Samuel H. is the head of a young French cybersecurity startup. He was arrested upon returning to France from San Francisco on March 27, 2026, after French investigators received information from their Bavarian counterparts in Germany. The German investigators had uncovered a network of 373,000 fraudulent websites promoting child pornography content and cybercrime services. They provided a list of about twenty clients in France. A suspicious purchase attempt of $27 during the night of September 30, 2022, for a content pack with an explicit name, "Girls rape," was detected and linked to Samuel H. through his bank card, which was generated using his Coinbase account. Samuel H. had previously worked at Anssi, France's national cybersecurity agency, before founding his startup. His family confirmed that he worked for his former employer during the day and on his startup in the evenings. He conducted research on the dark web and used Coinbase to study mechanisms such as mixing services and address generation. In twenty-three minutes, he executed a series of three transactions, including the one that led to his prosecution. In court, he stated he wanted to provide answers and emphasized that he never sought to access the images in question. The prosecution had requested a five-month suspended prison sentence and a 6,000 euro fine, citing what they described as a "desire to be a vigilante" outside the legal framework. The defense attorney, Margaux Mathieu, argued that the case deserved "a dismissal," noting that the most serious hypotheses considered during the investigation had "been ruled out." She described the fine as "symbolic" and stated that her client had never acquired, held, or consulted any child criminal content.