[music] >> On today's episode of the Talking Beat, our host Terry Wallo Strauss is joined by detectives John Richardson and Aaron Rizzo to talk about the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. First, a warning. This podcast contains information about sensitive topics that may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. In this show, detectives discuss investigating child predators, including those who possess child sexual abuse material or CSAM, and how they work with NCMEC, the National Center for Missing and Exploited [music] Children. Detectives will also highlight the most popular trend in cybercrimes against children, a crime called sextortion. Our detectives have seen a significant increase [music] in children and teens being threatened and coerced into sending explicit images online. As soon as that picture gets sent, immediately the tone changes of these chat messages and it becomes threatening and dangerous and they will send screenshots of the victim's picture in like a text thread to go out to all their friends if they don't send money immediately. We'll outline what predators do to seek victims [music] and give teens and their parents advice for seeking help if this crime has occurred. >> [music] >> Welcome and thanks for joining us today. I'm here today with Detective Aaron Rizzo and Detective John Richardson of our Internet Crimes Against Children Unit. Aaron, thanks for joining us today. Why don't you tell me a little bit about what the unit does? Sure. So, I'm a member of the Internet Crimes Against Children Unit. Been there since 2021. The unit is compromised right now of five investigators and an analyst and we investigate online child exploitation as members of a state task force and and four of us are members of a federal task force as well. So, this involves cases of people uploading child sexual abuse material that was previously referred to as child pornography within the city of Portland. This also involves children that are being abused online by unknown offenders and their parents are making police reports with the Portland police and involves the creation unfortunately of child sexual abuse material that is occurring within the home. So, we investigate cases kind of across that spectrum. And John, how many cases are we talking about? How many cases do you guys receive and how many do you actually investigate? That that number is kind of all over the place. The way that so I'll just give you a background real quick about the typically what we investigate are cyber tips. And so, there's the National Center for Missing Exploited Children. It's a nonprofit and they are kind of the triage spot for these tips. There's a federal law that requires that electronic service providers notify NCMEC when they believe that abuse is occurring on their platform. So, they notify NCMEC and NCMEC will they have their employees there that that look at the case and try to figure out where it came from and then they'll route that cyber tip in our case it's Oregon Department of Justice. And they will do they'll say, "Hey, we think that this tip came from Portland, Oregon." So, then they give it to us. The actual number is kind of difficult. We've gotten in some years we've gotten as many as a thousand. Unfortunately, a small amount of those are getting investigated. We're trying to do as many as we can, but it's just we have we have a lot of work and not a lot of people that are working on it. So, I would say I don't know, Aaron, maybe like 20% of cases that are actually getting detectives going to houses. Yeah, I mean the majority of these cases they're very complicated. The legal lift on them can be heavy. So, subpoenas have to be written, search warrants have to be written just to even identify who the suspect is in these cases and even subsequent to that once a case even resolves we could have terabytes of data to go through to identify child sexual abuse material if there's additional victims. So, the the average case that involves a search warrant could take 80 to 100 hours of investigative work on them. And and sometimes again because we we got to triage cases, our analyst does a good job of looking at every case to say that like we think there might be kids in the home that are you know, could potentially being abused. We definitely do triage on all the cases that we get sent to us, but as far as the cases being worked sometimes the leads in the cases aren't great, but there's a lot of factors that kind of goes into what makes those cases rise to the top for us to actually use our time on. So, like sometimes people will generate multiple cyber tips and those are all linked up. And so, again we just kind of look at the totality of the circumstances and >> [snorts] >> and but I mean if we had more investigators, we could probably be making a lot more arrests and contacting a lot more people, but unfortunately we're just not there right now. So, tell me what your day looks like. Aaron, what is involved in investigating these cases? We receive our cyber tips almost every single day we get we can get one to two tips. I think we've received two or three today. So, I know that our analyst is going through those cyber tips trying to identify suspects. So, I know that there's a constant influx of work coming in. Um John and I will kind of plan out our day if there's somebody we want to contact. So, some of these cases there may not be a whole lot of information beyond maybe an address. So, John and I will go out to an address. We call them a knock and talk and try to make contact with someone. Oftentimes we can get a confession, we take phones and we can start a criminal investigation that way. Um other cases well, like John was talking about we have triage. So, say a case comes in where we identify the suspect and the suspect has two things going for him. They are in a position of power and they have access to children. So, if those two events come together at a cyber tip, that will kind of everything else will slow down and then we'll bring all investigators in to start working a case like that because there is an immediate risk of danger to a child. >> Unfortunately, people that are in positions of power around kids, they kind of seek out those jobs. Our analyst does a really good job of when he does a triage of finding out, you know, if they are in a position of power, if they have an access if they have access to children. And yeah, so that I mean those are all things that we we take into account when we try to figure out how we're going to use our resources. I think for the most part our our caseload's pretty heavy. I think any all of us carry anywhere from probably 12 to 18 cases that are active and working in various stages. So, I currently have a case where I just had I wrote a 51-page search warrant to search a bunch of devices that we seized during a residential search warrant and now I know that it will take me dozens of hours to go through all the data, but I also have cases in the infancy stage that still need active workup. So, being able to kind of manage my time, what's important my suspect in the search warrant is I'm not concerned about him anymore, but I have cases where I don't know where the suspect is. I don't know if the suspect's continuing to abuse a child. So, uh working with John and the team to quickly identify these people and make contact with them as quick as possible is always the goal. Yeah, [snorts] it's it's kind of weird work because like you said, we do a lot of knock and talk. So, sometimes we have the cyber tip and we go knock on the door and and we're able to get a confession and and get the device and the case is just kind of wrapped up right there. But then sometimes these cases lead into really long like these investigations take a really long time because you have to write warrants to Google and then you have to wait for Google to respond to the legal requests and then you got to go through the data that comes back from Google and then you have to write residential search warrants and it just I I mean when I first came to the unit, that's how every case was worked and there were cases that took over a year to get through that. So, it's it's hard like our daily thing is, you know, I I I want to go my goal is to always go out to as many homes as possible, but sometimes it turns into a case that gets a lot of attention and I've got 2,000 pages of you know, of chat messages to go through and that that's really time-consuming. So, it's kind of all over the place I would say throughout the year, but Well, John, you actually came to us and wanted to do this podcast and we really appreciate that cuz there was one main focus that you really wanted to talk about a trend that's kind of going around that you wanted kids and their parents to and families to be aware of. Yeah, so I I wanted to educate people a little bit on the sextortion cases. It's something that we we get a lot of. It's also one that's hard to investigate because a lot of the suspects in these cases are outside of the country and they're they're I would say that the the trend is definitely involving teenage boys it seems like a lot who are sometimes they don't come forward. Um But what they'll do is they'll they go online and they meet somebody and then they start sending pictures of themselves to that person and those people use that picture to either leverage for more pictures or money. Um And so, I figured we could talk to people about it and and hopefully educate kids and parents number one prevent that from happening or maybe do our best to put kids in situations where they're not going to be doing that, but also kind of what to do if that happens to them. Um and how to respond. Yeah, we've seen this increase especially probably in the last 3 years of children specifically teenage boys being targeted by outside of the United States actors and what they're doing is they're creating accounts with uh girls approximately the same age as these boys and they're going on these online platforms and they're friending multiple people at the same time all within these friend groups and again it's extortion for money it's it could be extortion for additional images um but what we are seeing across the board is the effect on mental health for these teenagers we're seeing high suicidality rates um they're afraid to talk to it afraid to bring it up and I think what John and I would like to bring forward is that when these things happen if you know somebody that this is happening to like you can call and make a police report John and I will come out we come out in plain clothes um we just kind of want to know what's going on and see if we can identify somebody there have been cases that have been resolved outside the United States with the FBI and there are tools uh to kind of deal with this but it it's it's pervasive it could be in within a friend group of multiple people within the same friend group being uh targeted and they're not talking to each other so they don't even know that's occurring. Like I said before they're hard to investigate because the people are outside of the country and so I I really think that like our focus should be on just making sure that that never you know that it never happens. Uh but I mean Aaron's right it's like it's it's a complicated uh it's it's it's a complicated thing because these kids do have mental health issues a lot of them because they're like you said the friend groups they'll get the image and then they'll threaten to send it to all their friends or their you know their kids in their other kids in their circle. Um it's just um you know it's it's it's a mess. So if I'm a kid listening to this right now what advice would you give me? Um number one I think this is pretty obvious but uh don't send uh naked pictures of yourself uh to anybody in the internet it doesn't matter if you think that they're safe or that they're same age or uh I mean these people are going to use images or they're going to think the other person finds attractive. Um and so I mean number one you shouldn't be uh kids should never be taking pictures themselves even if they're sending it to somebody they know because uh we you know um relationships break up and people send those to other people and once they're out on the internet uh it just gets duplicated over and over and over again. You could be letting the genie out of the bottle and it's uh it's impossible to get it back in so. We've seen cases where these pictures get shared the person trusts them because they can the victim may see that oh this person is friends with my friends and the person is the suspect in this case has done enough research to say they go to maybe a local high school and so there's a they do a very good job of building trust and appearing to be a real person here in Portland Oregon and at the end of the day as soon as that picture gets sent immediately the tone changes of these chat messages and it becomes threatening and dangerous and they will send screenshots of the victim's picture in like a text thread to go out to all their friends if they don't send money immediately. Sometimes they will uh follow through on these threats sometimes they won't but just we're trying to educate just to avoid the this occurring at all. You know we've all done stupid things I I as a mother I told my kids you know listen I was young I did I did things I regret. So if you've done this if you're a kid what do you want to tell them right now and and how to how to um help them fix it I guess? Um I think uh the sooner you act the better um and I mean it's sad you know we've had this happen to kids and the kids are you know getting on their Apple Pay or their Cash App or whatever and sending people money cuz they don't want their parents to know but um I think you definitely need to go talk to your parents immediately but also you know I talked about the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children earlier so the way that uh NCMEC uh does stuff is they uh when a cyber tip's made they can reach out to the ISP and the the ISP I'm sorry the ESP the electronic service provider is required to uh preserve data so um if they do act fast and they uh you can make a cyber tip by calling the phone number or doing it online NCMEC can actually go through so let's say this happened on their Instagram account or their Snapchat account they can go preserve all that data and cuz a lot of these companies will only hold on to data for so long and once the data's preserved then we can go through when we do our criminal investigation we have stuff to work with. If people wait too long to report it that data's going to be gone we're not going to have anything so you you do need to tell somebody I think you do need to make a police report or a cyber tip to NCMEC um and we can we can do everything we can to to stop that image from being spread. Um there's also other things that NCMEC can do so whenever there's child sex abuse material that's been identified they'll attach a a way of identifying it so they'll they'll Google will scan for a hash value if they know that that image or the video is CSAM um and if kids are on us and they say hey this is the picture that got out uh we can contact NCMEC and say if you ever see this picture on your platform that is child sex abuse material and the people that are exchanging it you know in a year or so that I've gotten their hands on it uh we can identify when that's happening and we can make criminal cases on those. Yeah I can only imagine the fear and panic somebody feels like that but it's really getting them to understand they're a victim in the end correct? Yeah I think that all these kids feel like they they screwed up and because they feel like they screwed up they don't want to tell anybody about it or get in trouble but the reality is they've been groomed and they've been they're being victimized by somebody like like Aaron said they do such a good job of getting into the friend circles and actually looking like a real person from a neighboring school or an out of state school that's friend of so and so I mean we hear that uh so often in these cases to where it's like oh well I thought they were safe because they were you know Billy's friend and also friend with you know somebody else and so I thought they were safe. Uh they do a really good job of tricking you and so I would say that you uh you haven't done anything wrong I mean you've you've made a mistake um but you it's it's not your fault uh you've been groomed to do this and we need to do everything we can to catch the people that are doing it. So if if I'm a parent listening to this what advice do you have for me? Uh I would definitely do a good job of communicating with your kids and let them know first I would educate them on you know what's going to happen if they send their picture to to somebody. Um I I mean like I said don't even send your picture to to people that you that you trust we've had cases where you know girlfriend sends pictures when she's 15 to boyfriend and then boyfriend becomes an adult and he starts selling those pictures online so um when you're taking those pictures they could back come back to haunt you years down the road. Um so I would educate kids kind of on the reality of that but then also let your kid know that if they are being uh if somebody is coming after them online and trying to extort them uh that they need to uh they need to come forward and I would do everything I can to not I mean your kid's paying the price for it in that moment right it's humiliating they're probably really depressed and so I probably wouldn't I probably wouldn't punish them uh I would probably let them know that uh we're going to we're going to report this and do it the right way cuz I just kind of feel like they've already been punished enough so. Yeah I think having the some of the things that these parents can look out for is uh changes in behavior from the children um them using their phones in uh much more secure ways so one of the things that John and I look look at when we talk to people is most people have either an Android device or an Apple phone and the they come with built-in messenger platforms on them that are very secure and they work great I don't think there's no issues with them but when we start seeing phones of victims or suspects where there's additional chat platforms on there that raises red flags to me because why would you need something like that so if parents are seeing their kids with Telegram or Signal or Kik or I mean there's a whole host of chat platforms up there I think that's a good indicator to start asking some additional questions. Um it's up to the parents of how they want to police devices in their home. Um I always think that it's a good thing for no kid to have phones in their room after they go to bed. Um and then parents need to be able to have open access to these devices I understand that there are privacy issues that the child wants but I think that there needs to be ground rules for if they're communicating with an adult if pictures are being sent because at this point now things can get out of control and we just don't want to see children then being afraid to bring it back to their parents. So then being able to openly talk to their parents about what's going on in their life if something has happened and what the next steps to take. Uh we John and I sat at a lot of dinner tables and had these discussions with families and their children and kind of the steps to take going forward to keep them safe. Yeah there's there's no reason for a kid I think to have encrypted chat on their phone and so I would do a good job of educating yourself if you see an app on your kid's phone that you're not familiar with looking into it and finding out if it's anything that's encrypted or designed to to hide data from other people seeing it there's big you know that's a big uh warning sign to me so. These are horrific crimes and you guys deal with a lot how do you do this every day? >> [laughter] >> Lots of therapy. Uh I think uh one of the benefits to being in the unit that we've been in so John and I have been partners for years now is you you do form a like a camaraderie with the people you work with and that helps and having good supervisors who recognize the the trauma associated with our position so like we do we have wellness time as we need it and we can talk about it and we can meet with our supervisors and if we need to take a break, we can take a break. Um but being able to work with people in this hemisphere together helps a lot cuz everybody else understands. So we've gone to large-scale conferences and it you do feel like you're a part of a team because uh the content is really horrible and the things we deal with have like long-lasting traumatic effects, but being able to work with people that you can talk to it about talk with it about and kind of process it helps just a ton. So it's just kind of the people you work with. Yeah, it is. I I will say that like the mental health is pretty difficult. Um it's it's difficult for the stuff that we have to see, but I mean also like being short-handed and knowing that we can't investigate every case. I mean, we'll go knocking on a door sometimes and we don't think that there's any risk or there's kids and we go knocking on the door and we find out there's children in the house. And so like I said earlier, it's like we don't ever really know what a lot of times we're walking into or the situation that we're getting in. Aaron and me have both prevented kids from from being abused because we we we've gotten involved and and we can tell that there was a plan to abuse a kid. And so that's kind of what keeps us going. People ask me like how long are you going to do that for because it's got to be hard, but on the other hand, it's I don't know that there's a lot of you know, police work is you know, with some other crimes uh you can kind of I'm not justifying the crime, but like you know, two parties you know, in assault maybe somebody was threatening to hurt somebody else and somebody went a little too far. In these cases like there's no justification for it. And I also think 100% of these cases need to be investigated before any other kids are victimized. So that's kind of what keeps us going, I think. Um I know that like sometimes uh I can slow down and and uh you know, try to take a break, but I I there's something that I always struggle that like maybe I'm sitting back and I need to work harder and and get to more of these cases cuz I don't know what is going to be behind that door when I go knock on it. So the rewards are high. If you if you save one kid and it must feel really good when you're able to make an arrest of somebody that's really that's victimized a child. I can't even imagine. It is it's invigorating. It is uh yeah, it really it gives you energy to go do the next case. So they're hard, but they're worth it. I mean, I never wanted to do this type of work. I just kind of fell into it as an officer to help with the investigations and it has become my passion just because I just don't know that there's other places where you can make this type of impact. I agree. I think uh children always hold a safe place in our society and then uh the cases that John and I get where there are children involved and we're able to um prevent harm or stop harm is invigorating. It does give you that like sense to push on to the next one and push on to the next one because we we don't know what we're facing when we go to these doors. We don't know if we're interrupting something or if there was plans made to abuse a child that we're interrupting. We can just hope that when we get these cyber tips and we know that these people are looking at child sexual abuse material that this is the smoke that we can investigate before there is a hands-on offense, which is always the ultimate goal. Um and I think we do a really good job of it. I just we just it has grown exponentially. There's been I think a 600% increase in cyber tips in the last 5 years where nationwide we're at over 30 million and um it's almost it's just such an uphill battle, but we uh we try to work with our local and state and federal partners and investigate these crimes to the best of our ability just uh wish we had more more ability, too. You know, I I know that there's some people that we've contacted have been like, well, I'm just looking at these things and I'm not actually harming a kid. Um but I mean, a study showed that you know, 70 to 80% of people that are exchanging CSAM have had hands-on offenses before. And so I think that's really what pushes us to make sure that we do as much as we can. Yeah, and I want to make that point, too. Like if you find this on like your partner's phone or your spouse or your boyfriend or your girlfriend or you know, you happen to come across material to call you guys to report it because it may not be um it may be a lot wider than you than they're admitting or that you even think it is. It definitely will be a lot more. >> It's often some of the best cases that we've had in the last few years are cases that involve um a partner discovering this kind of content. Sometimes it's them discovering that maybe a their child is being abused. Sometimes it's I had one of those last week, yeah. >> Yeah, and we have or there's child sexual abuse material and the key with these cases is to make sure that you're safe and call 911 and and once the patrol gets there, they'll know we've go and talk to all the patrol officers in the city and [snorts] they should know to call us and we'll come out and we'll start our investigation from there, but um we had a case several years ago where somebody discovered something on one of my cases and there ended up being 65,000 images uh that were located after a search warrant. So often times what we're seeing is the iceberg. We're just seeing the very, very top. Um even during interviews where they confess, they tend to downplay and minimize what they've done, but once we start searching devices, we find out that it is a much bigger problem and they're often collecting large amounts of CSAM or um in the early processes of wanting maybe taking pictures of children out in public and things like that where they're at the beginning stages of wanting to abuse. Well, thanks for being here today, guys, and thanks for everything you do. Thank you. >> [music] >> If you need help and are in immediate danger, call 911. If you would like to make a tip, you can file a report with the National Center for Missing [music] and Exploited Children. 24-hour call center is 1-800-843-5678 or report.cybertip.org. Do you have a question for the Talking Beat? Send us an email at [music] talkingbeat@police.portlandoregon.gov or give us a call at 971-339-8868. If you enjoyed this episode, please share with your friends. >> [music] >> And for more episodes, visit our website portland.gov/police/podcast. >> [music]