Govini founder Eric Gillespie urged a person who he believed to be a dad offering his 10-year-old daughter to be sexually abused to use encrypted chat platforms, a Pennsylvania criminal complaint alleges.
"Signal is safer for er small talk," Gillespie wrote to the purported father, who was actually an undercover law-enforcement agent, according to a transcript of a chat included in the criminal complaint obtained by CNBC.
Gillespie then wrote that Session, another commonly used end-to-end encrypted platform, is "fine but less secure" than Signal, the filing says.
While chatting in Session, he sent the agent multiple photos of a "recent playmate" wearing a diaper and made repeated graphic references to sex acts with children, court documents state.
Gillespie also wrote that he preferred young children: "best when they can't talk."
