Our reporting team made contact with Eclipse president William Leal’s father.

(Illustration by qnel)

Malaysia resident Keisuke Nitta told Tansa that he had transferred “Album Collection,” an app rampant with digital sexual abuse, in 2020.

He had transferred the app to Eclipse Incorporated, which was located in Hawaii. In our interview, Nitta explained that he had transferred Album Collection without confirming whether Eclipse would take steps to prevent crime in the app.

Eclipse’s president was named William Leal, but Nitta said he had only met Leal once and did not know him well.

What kind of company was Eclipse, and who was its president, William Leal?

Was Eclipse a shell company?

We had known the name Eclipse since we began investigating Album Collection, because the following was listed on Album Collection’s website.

Operator name: Eclipse Incorporated
Person responsible for operations: William Leal
Address: 2333 Kapiolani Blvd #3515 Honolulu, HI 96826 USA

I also found Eclipse’s registration with the Hawaii state government, where, again, the president was listed as “William Leal.”

However, we could find no concrete information about Eclipse, not even a description of its work. Eclipse did not have a company website either. At first, we thought it might be a shell company with no real operations.

Transferred to a company whose president he “met by coincidence”

If Eclipse was a shell company, who was operating Album Collection?

We turned our attention to the similar apps that had preceded Album Collection.

They were called Photo Capsule and Video Container. Both were no longer in use, but while active they had been used to exchange photos and videos through the same mechanism as Album Collection. The buying and selling of illegal sexual images had been rampant on both apps.

Importantly, internal and other data for Photo Capsule, Video Container, and Album Collection matched. In other words, they were likely operated by the same person.

White-hat hackers working with us examined the data in Photo Capsule and Video Container and found two people associated with the operation of both applications.

Of the two, Malaysia resident Keisuke Nitta had been responsible for day-to-day operations.

In December 2023, we interviewed Keisuke Nitta in Shibuya, Tokyo, while he was temporarily back in Japan. During our interview, we learned that Eclipse in Hawaii was apparently not a shell company after all.

Nitta told us that he eventually had become unable to adequately respond to the prevalence of illegal sexual image trading — including child sexual abuse images — on Album Collection. Therefore, he had decided to transfer Album Collection to Eclipse.

Nitta had been introduced to Eclipse by the “system company” that maintained Album Collection’s system. Nitta had met Eclipse representative William Leal “by coincidence” prior to the transfer.

Nitta said he was still in contact with Eclipse’s relevant team member, who he said was Japanese. However, Nitta was vague about this Japanese person’s identity and role within Eclipse.

“I don’t know if he’s actually an employee or not. I’ve never seen proof of employment,” Nitta said.

The 26-year-old president

We collaborated with reporters from the NHK Special “Investigative Reporting: The New Century” in our investigation into the operators of Album Collection. In order to get a better understanding of Eclipse, we worked with an NHK researcher living in Hawaii.

In January 2024, the NHK researcher shared their findings.

The researcher had found two names linked to the condominium registered as Eclipse’s address.

One was William Leal. The researcher had also discovered his age: 26.The other name belonged to a 64-year-old man, possibly Leal’s father.The researcher sent an email to the man, who responded shortly.

“Yes he is my son. What information do you need?” he wrote.

He had attached to his email a photo of William, a selfie that showed him smiling in front of a cake with a candle on it that read “25.”

“Has my son gotten mixed up in some kind of trouble?”

The father was not currently living in Hawaii, nor did he live with William, so he wasn’t familiar with his son’s recent situation. However, when the researcher wrote in via email that William “may be involved with an app called Album Collection,” he responded as follows. (Brackets have been added by Tansa.)

“I do know that he was hired as an office manager by a Company that my ex wife described as a Tinder app type company.”

“I also remember him going to Hawaii to open up accounts at a bank for this app company. ”

“Could this be trouble for my son? I will contact my son and let you know!”

A few days later, the father sent another email. He said he had spoken with William.

According to the father, William had been hired by Eclipse because “he could return to Hawaii from Tokyo.” Apparently, William had said he was no longer working for Eclipse.

“He never realized he would show up as the owner of the app. He told me he no longer works there. I do not want to draw any attention to him. I think he learned his lesson on trusting people,” the father wrote.

“I know for a fact that he would not have been involved if he knew the site was being used for illicit and illegal reasons.”

We told the father that we wanted to meet and interview him, but he didn’t agree.

“I am not sure if being interviewed by NHK would, necessarily, clears his name so much as blow this whole thing up to him. It will bring too much unwanted attention towards him,” he wrote.

The reporting team heads to Hawaii

The father stopped replying to our emails for a while.

We still needed to go to Hawaii in person to verify the facts. William’s father had said William had moved to Tokyo. Even if so, we might be able to discover something by tracing Eclipse’s registered address and people who knew William.

We arrived in Hawaii on April 6. Why would a company that operates an app that has enabled so much digital sexual abuse in Japan be located in such a remote place?

I called William’s father to let him know our reporting team was in Hawaii. Upon doing so, he began to tell me about Eclipse’s background.

To be continued.

(Originally published on July 4, 2024.)

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