Homeland Security Investigations sees 300% increase in foreign victims of sextortion

(COLUMBIA, S.C.) — Homeland Security Investigations has seen a 300% increase in foreign victims of financial sextortion, according to the head of the center that investigates cybercrimes at the Department of Homeland Security.

“We have seen an 86% drop in domestic victims of financial sextortion since that time, unfortunately, what we’ve seen is almost 300% increase in foreign victims of financial sextortion,” Mike Prado the head of HSI’s Cyber Crime Center told ABC News.

Sextortion is when a victim sends explicit material to a scammer and then is threatened with public posting unless they pay the scammer money.

The HSI Cyber Crimes Center focuses on all things cyber – but they primarily focus on online child sexual exploitation, according to Prado.

“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.

The two most prevalent areas that sextortion scams take place is in the Ivory Coast and in Nigeria, according to Prado. Homeland Security Investigations has an agent detailed to the Ivory Coast to work with local authorities due to the non-extradition rules they have.

Prado added the scams are not sexual in nature, but just look to get money from victims.

Working to end child sexual abuse

Criminals who want to abuse children are attempting to get children off social media platforms and onto encrypted apps, outside the eyes of law enforcement, according to Prado.

“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 abusing these children,” he said.

Predators, he said, “stop at nothing” to abuse a child.

There has also been an unpick in the use of artificial intelligence to create images using children who haven’t been the victim of abuse.

“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,” he said. “This generative AI problem is going to exponentially grow the number of images that our agents are having to sift through to determine if a child has actually been directly abused or indirectly abused through the use of generative AI.”

To stop online predators, HSI deploys agents in 200 field offices around the country, and 93 foreign offices in 73 counties.

“These cases are tremendously important to us,” he said.” I want to continue to make it a priority that these cases be worked as expeditiously as possible.”