WASHINGTON, D.C. - Data provided by the Cyber Crime Center, a division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that investigates cybercrimes, confirmed that Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) has seen a 300 percent increase in foreign victims of financial sextortion.
According to ABC News, sextortion can be defined as when a victim sends explicit material to a scammer and then is threated with public posting unless they pay the scammer money. Mike Prado, head of HSI's Cyber Crime Center said, "We have seen an 86 percent drop in domestic victims of financial sextortion since that time, unfortunately, what we've seen is almost 300 percent increase in foreign victims of financial sextortion."
The HSI Cyber Crime Center focuses on all things related to cybercrimes, but Prado said that they primarily focus on online child sexual exploitation. He said, "The threat that we talk about has evolved so rapidly from even a few years ago that we're deploying new tools, new techniques, new proactive measures and new preemptive strategies to try to combat the continued prevalence of online child sexual exploitation and abuse."
Prado said that the two most prevalent areas that sextortion scams take place in in the Ivory Coast and in Nigeria. He said that the scams are not sexual in nature, but that the scammers just look to get money from the victims. HSI has an agent detailed to the Ivory Coast to work with local authorities due to the non-extortion rules they have.
The HSI's Cyber Crime Center continuously works to end child sexual abuse. Prado said that criminals who want to abuse children are attempting to get them off social media platforms and instead onto encrypted apps, which tend to fall outside the eyes of law enforcement. To stop online predators, HSI deploys agents in 200 field offices around the country, and 93 foreign offices in 73 countries.
He added, "Everywhere children are congregating online, predators are aware of that and then taking them off platform into other more encrypted chat rooms and areas where they can have encrypted conversations outside the eyes of law enforcement and outside the lot, outside the eyes of the tech industry and abusing these children." He said that predators will "stop at nothing" to abuse a child.
Additionally, there have been an uptick in the use of artificial intelligence to create images using children who haven't been the victim of abuse. Prado said, "It is probably the most concerning emergent threat that is now a reality that our agents are dealing with on a daily basis out in the field and that our agents at the cyber crime center are dealing with on a daily basis.
This generative AI problem is going to exponentially grow the number of images that our agents are having to sift through to determining if a child has actually been directly abused or indirectly abused through the use of generative AI." When reiterating HSI's stance on online child sexual exploitation, Prado said, "These cases are tremendously important to us. I want to continue to make it a priority that these cases be worked as expeditiously as possible."
According to ABC News, sextortion can be defined as when a victim sends explicit material to a scammer and then is threated with public posting unless they pay the scammer money. Mike Prado, head of HSI's Cyber Crime Center said, "We have seen an 86 percent drop in domestic victims of financial sextortion since that time, unfortunately, what we've seen is almost 300 percent increase in foreign victims of financial sextortion."
The HSI Cyber Crime Center focuses on all things related to cybercrimes, but Prado said that they primarily focus on online child sexual exploitation. He said, "The threat that we talk about has evolved so rapidly from even a few years ago that we're deploying new tools, new techniques, new proactive measures and new preemptive strategies to try to combat the continued prevalence of online child sexual exploitation and abuse."
Prado said that the two most prevalent areas that sextortion scams take place in in the Ivory Coast and in Nigeria. He said that the scams are not sexual in nature, but that the scammers just look to get money from the victims. HSI has an agent detailed to the Ivory Coast to work with local authorities due to the non-extortion rules they have.
The HSI's Cyber Crime Center continuously works to end child sexual abuse. Prado said that criminals who want to abuse children are attempting to get them off social media platforms and instead onto encrypted apps, which tend to fall outside the eyes of law enforcement. To stop online predators, HSI deploys agents in 200 field offices around the country, and 93 foreign offices in 73 countries.
He added, "Everywhere children are congregating online, predators are aware of that and then taking them off platform into other more encrypted chat rooms and areas where they can have encrypted conversations outside the eyes of law enforcement and outside the lot, outside the eyes of the tech industry and abusing these children." He said that predators will "stop at nothing" to abuse a child.
Additionally, there have been an uptick in the use of artificial intelligence to create images using children who haven't been the victim of abuse. Prado said, "It is probably the most concerning emergent threat that is now a reality that our agents are dealing with on a daily basis out in the field and that our agents at the cyber crime center are dealing with on a daily basis.
This generative AI problem is going to exponentially grow the number of images that our agents are having to sift through to determining if a child has actually been directly abused or indirectly abused through the use of generative AI." When reiterating HSI's stance on online child sexual exploitation, Prado said, "These cases are tremendously important to us. I want to continue to make it a priority that these cases be worked as expeditiously as possible."
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