The FBI and French law enforcement have seized two websites that sold hacked and stolen sexually explicit images and videos of young women and girls, and arrested their suspected administrator in northern France.
Seizure notice (Source: US Department of Justice)
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced on Wednesday that the seized domains belonged to NudeLeaksTeens (NLT), and that the operation was carried out with the FBI Washington Field Office and the cybercrime division of the Paris prosecutor’s office.
According to the seizure warrant, NLT sold its content in “albums” and “collections” that often included the personal identifying information of victims, along with pictures of them in various stages of undress and engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
Although the site posted warnings against child sexual abuse material (CSAM), investigators found that it also sold sexually explicit images and videos of children. “Some of the victims have been identified and confirmed to be minors at the time the visual depictions were created,” the Justice Department noted.
One collection named after the site was advertised as containing 6,200 private nude files of teenagers and adults, mostly American, taken from hacked Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook accounts, and that collection also contained CSAM.
“The seizure of these domains represents a decisive step in dismantling the criminal networks that hide behind anonymous online platforms to exploit victims,” said Darren B. Cox, assistant director in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office.
“Working shoulder to shoulder with our national, international, and private sector partners, we cut off the infrastructure that enabled the distribution of images and videos obtained through the hacking of victim social media accounts—striking directly at the core of this illicit online marketplace,” Cox added.
The suspected administrator, a 25-year-old man, and his 21-year-old brother were arrested by French police during the operation. French authorities put the number of victims at more than 17,000 women worldwide.
Users were rewarded with cryptocurrency for supplying information about the victims, who were indexed on the site by age, place of residence, profession and physical appearance, and given a “beauty rating out of 10.”
Investigators seized about €700,000 in Bitcoin, Litecoin, USDT and Ethereum at the brothers’ homes.
Both the FBI and French authorities have asked victims of the platform to come forward.
