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More than 500 bank, financial services, and digital currency accounts linked to the sexual extortion of Australian teenagers have been shut down by the Australian Federal Police today.
According to the Australian Federal Police (AFP), global criminal syndicates were tricking young people into paying them by pretending to be other adolescents and asking for explicit pictures or videos. If victims paid, they said they would release what they had on the victim.
The AFP’s Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE) has monitored an increase of more than 100 reports of sextortion targeting children, this type of crime happens monthly this year rather than yearly.
However, law enforcement is more worried that the number of minors who have fallen victim in Australia is much greater. This belief comes from research that suggests that less than 25% of children tell police when they’re subjected to a crime.
As a result of the investigative efforts by the AFP and Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), more than 500 financial accounts in Australia that were being used to send money from victims to international crime rings have now been shut down.
There were about 100 people responsible for the accounts.
The actions, which the financial sector cooperated with, were part of AFP-headed Operation Huntsman, which commenced in June.
After reviewing more evidence, law enforcement officials have found that approximately “We are experiencing a global trend of offshore crime syndicates targeting teenagers; 1000 additional accounts are involved in worldwide money laundering. More than 90% of data showed that victims were male and predominantly 15-17 years old,” said AFP Commander Hilda Sirec. However, police had seen victims as young as ten years old.
“We are experiencing a global trend of offshore crime syndicates targeting teenagers, predominantly young men and boys, being coerced into sending sexually explicit content and then blackmailing them,” she stated.
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