Interpol Identifies Over 140 Human Traffickers in New Initiative

Interpol has claimed success with a new online operation designed to uncover human trafficking victims and facilitators operating in South America and Europe.

The policing group teamed up with inter-governmental body the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), in response to a growing and concerning trend. Victims are lured by fake or deceptive job offers to travel from South America to Europe where they are exploited – often by being forced into prostitution.

Interpol said its “innovative” first-of-its-kind operation took place November 19-22 and resulted in the identification of:

• 68 potential victims
• 146 potential exploiters, recruiters and facilitators
• 365 usernames and 162 URLs linked to suspicious activity

The operation involved the use of facial recognition technology. For example, police in the Netherlands and Venezuela collected facial images of women advertised as Venezuelan escorts on European websites and ran them against Interpol databases for matches with historic “Blue Notices.”

Read more on human trafficking: Global Police Track Human Traffickers in Online Crackdown

Other examples of successful work during the operation include:

• Police in Ireland and Brazil identifying a suspected recruiter, after spotting a surge in Brazilian women on an “adult service” website in Ireland
• UK police identifying a domestic services website “closely connected” to a page offering sexually explicit content
• Dutch police analyzing Telegram groups featuring offers for sex workers which showed signs of exploitation. They extracted images, usernames and telephone numbers for further investigation
• German officers uncovering a potentially underage victim advertised in Switzerland

“Technology is, now more than ever, facilitating all forms of organized crime – human trafficking is no exception,” argued Interpol acting executive director of police services, Cyril Gout.

“This innovative operational week at Interpol’s headquarters successfully brought together officers at both ends of this troubling trafficking flow between Latin America and Europe. Their hard work led to the detection of hundreds of incidents and data elements that will be the basis for further investigation.”