A Welkom man has been sentenced to 8 400 years in prison for sexual offenses involving children.
Mario Guisti (36) was found guilty on 1 010 charges of raping two boys, one charge of human trafficking and 1 007 charges of possessing, creating, and distributing child pornography.
His name was placed on the sex offenders’ register, and he has been found unfit to work with children.
Capt. Bez Bezuidenhout of the provincial Serial and Electronic Crime Investigation unit (SECI), a specialised section within the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences (FCS) unit, arrested him.
Guisti was flagged by the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) for uploading child sexual abuse material on the dark web.
The investigation team, consisting of Bezuidenhout, Capt. Fanie van der Merwe of the Thabong FCS unit and WO Pieter de Wahl of the provincial Local Criminal Record Centre, worked tirelessly to analise the information received from Interpol.
First, they only received photographs from Interpol. Through the eyes of a seasoned detective, a fingerprint was visible on one of the photographs in question.
By analysing the fingerprint, they were able to identify the suspect.
As the investigation unfolded, the suspect was tracked down and arrested in Welkom in August 2022.
His electronic equipment was seized for analysis.
The suspect, who is a computer programmer, lured the boys, whom he preferred to be aged from eight to ten years of age, with computer games.
The parents of the victims trusted him and allowed the children to stay over at his house, thinking they were playing games.
He even arranged for one of the victims to come all the way from Durban to visit him, and the boy stayed with him for months.
