Karim Rajwani International Financial Crime Expert

[00:00:13] Welcome back to the Social World Podcast. You can Google thoughts on the social world. I'm Dave Niven and as always, it's a pleasure to have your company. Now, I think everybody's realized that safeguarding has been the kind of core issue of most of the podcasts that have been done over the last 10 years by myself. And again, I love to go back to people that I never had an opportunity to fully discover what they're doing. And today is a perfect example of that.

[00:00:43] I'm going to be talking to Karim Rajwani, who is an independent financial crime consultant and based everywhere under the sun and involved with so many different things. I'm going to let him explain it for himself. Anyway, look, Karim, welcome to the program.

[00:01:01] Karim Rajwani International Thank you so much. It's so good to talk to you again.

[00:01:05] Karim Rajwani International Now, I want, it's been six months since we talked. And I know there's been quite a bit of activity since then. And I wonder if you could just lay out for us a bit of the problem of trafficking, slavery, financial crime involved in these horrible subjects. I mean, has it been getting better, worse? How about starting us off, if you could, with some statistics, if you could, and then we'll get into the meat and potatoes of it, as it were.

[00:01:31] Karim Rajwani International Sure. Yeah. So interestingly, you know, a number of reports have come out since we last chatted. And, you know, when we last chatted, we thought the problem around human trafficking was about $134 billion annually. So this is all human trafficking. And that was by the International Labor Organization in the US.

[00:01:57] Karim Rajwani International Yes. The most recent report now suggests the profits is around $234 billion. So much bigger problem now.

[00:02:11] Karim Rajwani International Is that dollars?

[00:02:12] Karim Rajwani International In terms of dollars, US dollars, that is correct.

[00:02:16] Karim Rajwani International Obviously, this could be better reporting, but also a growth in sort of the overall human trafficking problem.

[00:02:25] Karim Rajwani International And if we look at the report by the Global Coalition to Fight Financial Crime, they estimate that revenue, so the first number, the 234 was profits.

[00:02:38] So the Global Coalition estimates the revenue to be in the region of $500 billion or close to $500 billion.

[00:02:47] Karim Rajwani International It's just mind-boggling the numbers, isn't it?

[00:02:51] Karim Rajwani International Yeah.

[00:02:51] Karim Rajwani International Yeah.

[00:02:51] And then, you know, if you add sort of cyber crime, which is, you know, not just human trafficking, but cyber crime generally, you know, cybersecurity ventures, a report by them, you know, expects this to grow by 15% year over year over the next five years.

[00:03:10] Karim Rajwani International And they estimate it'll reach $10.5 trillion USD annually.

[00:03:16] So that sort of gives you some sort of idea of the magnitude of financial crime, cyber crime, and in particular human trafficking.

[00:03:25] Karim Rajwani International Sounds like there's a lot of work for you to do.

[00:03:30] Karim Rajwani I can tell you the industry is extremely, extremely busy.

[00:03:35] And this is a very difficult problem to solve for.

[00:03:38] Karim Rajwani International You've been involved with several different organizations.

[00:03:41] In fact, you still are.

[00:03:42] I mean, and some I've talked to some of the people in them as well as part of, you know, as part of this podcasting series.

[00:03:49] But do you think, can I just ask you a question?

[00:03:52] Do you think that there's far too many small organizations trying to do good work as opposed to kind of joined up thinking?

[00:04:02] Karim Rajwani Yeah, you know, that's a really good question.

[00:04:05] Karim Rajwani International And certainly over the past five years, and more importantly, over the past two or three years, there's been a massive focus on, you know, industry consortiums as the ability to, for the industry to come together, to share information.

[00:04:24] Karim Rajwani Now, obviously, there are, you know, a number of privacy restrictions in terms of what you can and cannot share.

[00:04:31] Karim Rajwani Nevertheless, you know, you can share ideas how you approach a particular problem.

[00:04:39] Karim Rajwani And more and more, I think there is a push to think through, you know, is there a better way of solving, you know, some of these problems?

[00:04:49] Karim Rajwani Organized crime obviously don't follow any rules.

[00:04:54] Karim Rajwani They exploit as many institutions as possible.

[00:04:58] Karim Rajwani And, you know, it's incumbent upon us to work together as an industry if we're going to begin to sort of turn the tide on this.

[00:05:06] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:05:07] Karim Rajwani Now, you mentioned the money side of it, the massive figures that you talked about there, and the fact that it's an upward trend in terms of actually growing every year, year on year.

[00:05:18] Karim Rajwani But is there a way you can sort of give us a general idea of some of the bigger trends that you're coming across within this kind to try to combat this?

[00:05:31] Karim Rajwani Yeah, in terms of combat, there's a couple of areas I want to talk about sort of within sort of the human trend.

[00:05:36] Karim Rajwani The big trends that are happening, the big crimes, and then talk about sort of how to sort of combat some of these.

[00:05:46] Karim Rajwani So if we start with pig butchering, you'll hear the term.

[00:05:51] Karim Rajwani Yeah, please explain that.

[00:05:52] Karim Rajwani Pig butchering.

[00:05:53] Karim Rajwani It sounds a terribly kind of awful phrase, but if you could just explain it, please.

[00:05:58] Karim Rajwani Yeah, and it's interesting.

[00:06:00] Karim Rajwani It's essentially a scam regime, right?

[00:06:05] Karim Rajwani The reason why it's called pig butchering is the victims are likened to hubs where you fatten them up for slaughter.

[00:06:16] Karim Rajwani So what typically happens is, you know, for other criminals, this becomes a win-win.

[00:06:21] Karim Rajwani What they do is in countries such as Myanmar, they, you know, essentially traffic people to work in these scam centers and they're locked up.

[00:06:32] Karim Rajwani They have no choice.

[00:06:34] Karim Rajwani Everything is taken away from them and their job as prisoners is to basically run these call centers and scam people.

[00:06:43] Karim Rajwani Okay.

[00:06:43] Karim Rajwani Now, you know, it is very organized, it is very sophisticated, and they will research, you know, their targets for weeks, months, and sometimes years.

[00:06:57] Karim Rajwani And the scam could be a romance scam, it could be sextortion, could be, you know, cryptocurrency, a whole bunch of different things.

[00:07:07] Karim Rajwani Initially, they'll sort of make contact, tell them about the scheme, and you even get some money out of it.

[00:07:14] Karim Rajwani And the more you invest, and eventually, obviously, the money disappears.

[00:07:20] Karim Rajwani To give you an idea of just this particular area, you know, it's, and the University of Texas did some research and they think it's netted at least $75 billion since January 2020.

[00:07:38] Karim Rajwani And they estimate some 220,000 people are essentially forced in Cambodia and Myanmar alone to basically go around scam people.

[00:07:51] Karim Rajwani Did you say 220,000?

[00:07:54] Karim Rajwani 220,000. It's staggering, and that's just in two countries.

[00:07:58] Karim Rajwani Right, okay.

[00:07:59] Karim Rajwani So, you know, what can we do?

[00:08:02] Karim Rajwani Certainly, the financial services industry is talking about this working together.

[00:08:08] Karim Rajwani There is an international working group in this particular area.

[00:08:14] Karim Rajwani Law enforcement is heavily focused.

[00:08:18] Karim Rajwani The various agencies are heavily focused in this area, and you'll see a number of arrests around this.

[00:08:27] Karim Rajwani You know, in terms of individuals, you know, you've got to know the tactics used in how to protect yourself.

[00:08:38] Karim Rajwani You know, typically it's an unknown caller or a text.

[00:08:43] Karim Rajwani They usually, you know, pitching something like cryptocurrency, an easy investment opportunity, this emotional manipulation.

[00:08:53] Karim Rajwani Don't miss out. It's a once in a lifetime chance to make profit.

[00:08:58] Karim Rajwani You know, and initially you actually even make some money and they create fake websites and fake crypto wallets and it all looks legitimate until the victim takes the bait.

[00:09:16] Karim Rajwani Right.

[00:09:18] Karim Rajwani Okay.

[00:09:19] Karim Rajwani How about how people could protect themselves?

[00:09:22] Karim Rajwani Yeah, you know, great question.

[00:09:25] Karim Rajwani These are essentially social engineering scams, right?

[00:09:30] Karim Rajwani They really work by exploiting the psychology of people, their inclination to trust.

[00:09:39] Karim Rajwani One, you know, if you do get such calls, slow down.

[00:09:43] Karim Rajwani Because what they want to do is get you to act, act quickly.

[00:09:48] Karim Rajwani Just take your time.

[00:09:50] Karim Rajwani Think about it.

[00:09:53] Karim Rajwani Certainly the first step would be if you don't know who it is, don't answer the call, don't respond to the text.

[00:10:00] Karim Rajwani Always research the facts, right?

[00:10:04] Karim Rajwani Research the URL.

[00:10:07] Karim Rajwani You know, verify the contact details.

[00:10:10] Karim Rajwani Be cautious.

[00:10:12] Karim Rajwani Some of this is, you know, common sense around new acquaintances.

[00:10:18] Karim Rajwani You know, new friendships, new romantic relationships, particularly where they start to talk about investing, investing in crypto.

[00:10:26] Karim Rajwani They're short of money.

[00:10:29] Karim Rajwani These are all telltale signs.

[00:10:32] Karim Rajwani Obviously, never share personal information.

[00:10:35] Karim Rajwani Your members, bank accounts.

[00:10:38] Karim Rajwani Don't sign up for crypto unless you know exactly what you're doing and you're, you know, sure that they're legitimate.

[00:10:46] Karim Rajwani A lot of people think crypto, I can make a, you know, quick million dollars.

[00:10:50] Karim Rajwani Unfortunately, it does not work there.

[00:10:55] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:10:55] Karim Rajwani You know, and you know, just block these numbers.

[00:11:00] Karim Rajwani It's a classic sort of seductive scam that has been around since ever.

[00:11:07] Karim Rajwani There were people that wanted to exploit other people.

[00:11:10] Karim Rajwani But just now with social media, I expect apart from anything else, it's just it's just exponentially grown huge, hasn't it?

[00:11:19] Karim Rajwani Yeah, so you've got the social media, the various, you know, chat rooms, chat forums, apps.

[00:11:27] Karim Rajwani So the mode of communication has increased a hundredfold.

[00:11:31] Karim Rajwani And then the second big change is now you've got people basically being trafficked, labor trafficked in camps who are, you know, not paid and, you know, locked up in their job full time is to scam people.

[00:11:50] Karim Rajwani So, you know, for the organized criminals, it's a win-win, right? They don't have to pay these individuals and they get to scam people.

[00:12:01] Karim Rajwani We've just discovered in the UK, I mean, people you probably know about already that McDonald's has been employing people who've been slaved.

[00:12:10] Karim Rajwani And that's come out as a sort of a very recent kind of expose in the media.

[00:12:16] But I mean, the numbers are tiny in comparison to what you're talking about.

[00:12:21] Karim Rajwani Yeah, you know, the interesting thing about labor trafficking is, you know, there are statistics, but you just don't know what you don't know, right?

[00:12:32] Karim Rajwani Because the challenge with labor trafficking is, do you really know your supply chain end to end?

[00:12:39] Karim Rajwani And while you may not be employing, you know, individuals that at minimum are no wage, who are you buying from?

[00:12:49] Karim Rajwani Certainly more and more countries are now legislating to say, hey, it's your responsibility to do supply chain due diligence.

[00:12:59] Karim Rajwani And that, you know, I think that is well needed.

[00:13:04] Karim Rajwani Do you think it's improving at all?

[00:13:06] Karim Rajwani Because I do understand the massive problems in supply chain because the end user, the customer, very, very, very rarely, in my opinion, would even check where the clothes are made or where the food is sourced from.

[00:13:25] Karim Rajwani It seems to me a huge gap there in customer information or in customer even wanting to know.

[00:13:33] Karim Rajwani Yeah, certainly, historically, there's been just a complete lack of information.

[00:13:39] Karim Rajwani I think what we are seeing is legislation is in part to respond to not just government concerns but public concerns.

[00:13:54] Karim Rajwani Certainly, you know, if you look at, you know, Gen Z or whatever the next Gen is, they're beginning to say who should I shop with?

[00:14:04] Karim Rajwani Where should I go?

[00:14:05] Karim Rajwani Who should I buy from?

[00:14:08] Karim Rajwani And, you know, the more we can publicize this, the greater impact it will have because at the end of the day, you know, private enterprise responds to the bottom line.

[00:14:22] Karim Rajwani And if the bottom line is impacted, you know, whether through fines, penalties, you know, criminal sanctions or an impact in sales, they will change behavior.

[00:14:34] Karim Rajwani Okay.

[00:14:36] Karim Rajwani We perhaps dip back into that as we talk further.

[00:14:41] Karim Rajwani But at the moment, I mean, young people, I mean, okay, lots of gullible adults, I get it.

[00:14:49] Karim Rajwani But at the same time, there's an awful lot of young people who are ripe for exploitation.

[00:14:56] Karim Rajwani And I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about what's called sextortion and give a bit of advice about that for any young people or people who are working with young people.

[00:15:10] Karim Rajwani Sure.

[00:15:10] Yeah.

[00:15:11] Karim Rajwani So basically, what is sextortion?

[00:15:14] Karim Rajwani This is where, you know, a young adult, it could happen to anybody, but certainly the rapid increase is in under 18s, particularly boys under 18, where they share a picture of them, you know, which is sort of a nude picture and an inappropriate picture.

[00:15:40] Karim Rajwani And very quickly, you know, in a matter of minutes, hours, there's financial blackmail essentially to say, send us money or we will share this with all your friends and contacts and post it on social media.

[00:15:58] Karim Rajwani Interestingly, you know, between three and five percent of people are believed to have experienced some form of sextortion before reading, reaching adulthood.

[00:16:12] Karim Rajwani Really? Three to five percent?

[00:16:15] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:16:16] Karim Rajwani So in terms of, you know, increases, you know, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children over in the US, we've seen a 7,200 percent increase in sextortion reports between 2021 and 2022.

[00:16:36] Karim Rajwani Wow.

[00:16:39] Karim Rajwani The Internet Watch Foundation out of the UK, again, seen a massive increase.

[00:16:47] Karim Rajwani Typically, it's boys, 90 percent are male, you know, they're between 13 and 17.

[00:16:55] Karim Rajwani What we know, you know, based on research by organizations like CyberTEP, the Canadian Center for Child Protection, 79 percent of initial contact,

[00:17:06] Karim Rajwani The Internet Watch Foundation happens on Instagram or Snapchat, and very quickly they move to more secure encrypted chat apps.

[00:17:18] Karim Rajwani You know, the main countries that this is coming from, based on sort of the latest statistics is Philippines, Nigeria, by far the largest, Cote d'Avoire and Korea.

[00:17:33] Karim Rajwani So in terms of the criminals rather than the victims?

[00:17:37] Karim Rajwani Yeah, in terms of the criminals.

[00:17:39] Karim Rajwani Right.

[00:17:40] Karim Rajwani Again, very organized.

[00:17:43] Karim Rajwani And the difference here is it's soon as that picture is shared, and sometimes the picture may not even be shared, and we'll talk more about this a little bit later, they can use AI to nudify the picture on social media.

[00:17:58] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:18:00] Karim Rajwani And worry quickly, they will, you know, within minutes and hours start to extort or sextort the individual and, you know, ask them to pay, you know, I think the most common amount is between $100 and $500.

[00:18:16] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:18:17] Karim Rajwani And now what's happening is that's gone, you know, one step further where it's statistic sextortion, where children as young as 12 are coerced into producing extremely, you know, some extreme, extreme content, you know, without getting into the details and even stuff like self-harm, which the Australian police identified like it's 117% increase in access.

[00:18:46] Karim Rajwani The question is, you know, how do people protect themselves. So before sort of we go into that one final point, there is a big rise in suicide. So this is not just, hey, it's okay, we've lost $100 or $500. You know, kids are killing themselves of the shame and the potential repercussions. So, you know, real, real lives are being lost.

[00:19:14] Karim Rajwani Yeah. I mean, it's, I remember, you know, 20 years ago, a big argument and kind of trying to make people aware of the fact that if they didn't even, for example, keep their Facebook page private, pictures of their children on the Facebook could be taken and have,

[00:19:39] Karim Rajwani be pasted onto naked photographs elsewhere or naked pictures. You know, I mean, there's always this manipulation of photographs if you weren't protecting your own images.

[00:19:52] Karim Rajwani And that was 20 odd years ago. And now it's with AI and everything else. It's absolutely growing exponentially, as far as I can understand it. And listening to you, that sort of reinforces that thinking.

[00:20:05] Karim Rajwani Yes, absolutely. So, and we'll talk more about this in a couple of minutes. Two particular trends. One is using generative AI, gen AI. And the second trend is self-generated images. So, I mean, let's, you know, what can they use to protect themselves?

[00:20:27] Karim Rajwani Yeah. Sorry, interrupt you, John, that one. Go ahead.

[00:20:30] Karim Rajwani No, no, no, no, I think you bring up some really valuable points there. Advice, you know, point number one, and this comes from, you know, the experts who man the cyber tip lines, the various hotlines. One, stop all communication.

[00:20:49] Karim Rajwani Secondly, reach out to a trusted adult, a guardian, police, cyber tips, you know, some sort of cyber tip, internet watch foundation in the UK, wherever it's places you can actually go for help. You will not be in trouble with law enforcement, you know, for reporting this.

[00:21:15] Karim Rajwani Do not comply with any threats. Do not send them money. Do not send them images.

[00:21:24] Karim Rajwani If you can just cope with the embarrassment, please tell somebody.

[00:21:30] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:21:31] Karim Rajwani And, you know, in many cases with some of this, you can actually even remain anonymous if you want and seek initial help.

[00:21:39] Karim Rajwani Deactivate the account, but don't delete the social media account or images because you lose the audit trail. So that's really important. You know, save any copies of the images you've sent. Take screenshots of the messages, the person's profile, the username.

[00:21:59] Karim Rajwani All of this can be used. Trust your instincts, you know, practice caution when communicating online. Most importantly, there is a life after this, you know, after these images.

[00:22:15] Karim Rajwani The offender might make you feel that your life is over. It's not. A lot of people get over it. Remember, a lot of this is AI generated. You may not even have shared it.

[00:22:29] Karim Rajwani You know, and so just you need to reach out and realize that this will be over, right? You really don't need to harm yourself.

[00:22:41] Karim Rajwani I know. I appreciate that. I think that's excellent advice for people listening. Sometimes easier said than done, of course, because people think, oh, if it's out there, it's going to be there forever.

[00:22:56] Karim Rajwani I'm never going to get, you know, any peace in my life anymore and so on and so on. But can I just ask this? I don't know if you've come across any kind of sense of things. Law enforcement, right? I mean, when you said keep the images or whatever so that it can be traced or help to be traced and so forth, and then finally imagine it is.

[00:23:19] Karim Rajwani Are the penalties kind of being set out much more clearly these days, or are they still virtually a slap on the wrist?

[00:23:34] Karim Rajwani Good question. I'm not too close to it. What I have seen is it really depends on the country.

[00:23:42] Karim Rajwani You know, I'd say that the most stringent is someone like the US, you know, where they probably throw away the keys. You know, I think the UK is somewhere in the middle and, you know, Canada probably, you know, at the bottom in terms of penalties.

[00:24:04] Karim Rajwani The Pacific Rim countries that you mentioned, where an awful lot of the victims are, as well as the countries that you mentioned, whether it was the Philippines or Nigeria or wherever, where an awful lot of the perpetrators are. How do they kind of deal with this? Have they got a sophisticated enough law enforcement challenge?

[00:24:30] Karim Rajwani I think historically, the problem has been ignored.

[00:24:34] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:24:35] Karim Rajwani You know, whether it be by local law enforcement or the banking industry. Now there is incredible pressure by governments, financial institutions with this, these countries to say, hey, wake up, you know, and even support to say, hey, what sort of support you need to, to tackle this problem.

[00:24:58] Karim Rajwani But it's still a long way away, you know, because we don't see the numbers going down. So certainly a lot of work to be done in these countries.

[00:25:08] Karim Rajwani Okay. Manalu, we're going to double back on a couple of things in a minute. But I mean, I know that something that you've, you've been interesting in tackling and making people aware about is what you would call deep fake pornography.

[00:25:25] Karim Rajwani How would you kind of sum that up? And what issues are arising? Is that the AI issues you're talking about?

[00:25:33] Karim Rajwani Yeah, so certainly with, you know, the advent of gen AI and the, you know, the latest and greatest AI techniques has seen sort of a massive increase in deep fake porn.

[00:25:52] Karim Rajwani And child sexual abuse material.

[00:25:56] Karim Rajwani Like in 2017, you know, a survey found one in eight people had been targets. Obviously, women were significantly more likely. And, you know, the experts expect social media to be flooded with deep fake porn videos, deep fake voice.

[00:26:23] Karim Rajwani And, you know, since 2019, there's like a 550% increase. I don't know if you remember, but the web, the app, sorry, deep nude got shut down.

[00:26:37] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:26:38] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:26:39] Karim Rajwani Right? Because it had like, you know, over 100,000 users. And there are a number of call them nudify apps. And, you know, today in 25 minutes, with spending, you know, $0, you can create, you know, a minute long deep fake pornography video.

[00:27:06] Karim Rajwani Where would you put it? Tell me, let's say I was interested, you know, not me, but somebody was interested in doing that, right? You know, to criminal or for personal revenge or whatever. I mean, where would they put it that wouldn't be taken down?

[00:27:24] Karim Rajwani So, yeah, great question. So there's three things sort of, sort of three buckets we've got to put this in. And some of, you know, bucket one is self, call it self gratification for their own purpose on their own on computers. Second one is, you know, for humiliation.

[00:27:46] Karim Rajwani The revenge pornography thing.

[00:27:49] Karim Rajwani Revenge pornography. And the third one we sort of talked about, which is, you know, financial extortion, sex extortion.

[00:27:57] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:27:58] Karim Rajwani You know, and whether it's the open web, deep web or dark web is flooded with pornography and child pornography. So there are a lot of people out there.

[00:28:13] Karim Rajwani There's a lot of demand out there. And what's concerning is CSAM, child sexual abuse material is being normalized. It's just so well, you know, it's everywhere, therefore, it must be okay.

[00:28:29] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:28:30] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:28:30] Karim Rajwani You know, so it's a growing threat. The UK's Internet Watch Foundation, again, said there's a significant and growing threat,

[00:28:41] Karim Rajwani Where AI is being used to exploit children. And they found that in October 23, I believe they reported, they identified over 20,000 images on the dark web.

[00:28:57] Karim Rajwani This was a UK Internet Watch Foundation.

[00:29:00] Karim Rajwani It is. Yeah.

[00:29:01] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:29:03] Karim Rajwani You know, in countries like South Korea, it's become a national emergency.

[00:29:12] Karim Rajwani You know, where Telegram was being used to blackmail, you know, dozens of women into performing sexual acts. Now the ringleader, you know, is serving 42 years. And you probably saw the boss of Telegram being and the founder of, you know, Pavel.

[00:29:35] Karim Rajwani Yeah, I did. Yeah. I mean, he's now being challenged. I don't know what the latest thing is today on that. But I did reckon didn't hear that he was challenged. I mean, I was going to ask you about, you know, if you like grading social media platforms, because obviously Telegram's getting a bad press always has done, to be honest with you as well, because of all the various sort of conspiracies that it seemed to publish without much challenge.

[00:30:01] Karim Rajwani But are there any that you would consider to be more socially responsible in terms of platforms?

[00:30:10] Karim Rajwani I think that's a tough one to answer.

[00:30:13] Karim Rajwani That's fine. I think there are those who have, you know, robust policies, at least in writing.

[00:30:24] Karim Rajwani But in terms of monitoring and taking down the images and dealing with a problem.

[00:30:31] Karim Rajwani I don't believe and this is my personal opinion, there are, you know, any platforms that are outstanding there to say, hey, let's look up to that.

[00:30:40] Karim Rajwani I just haven't seen it.

[00:30:44] Karim Rajwani You know, and what we are seeing is.

[00:30:48] Karim Rajwani I being used to generate images, you know, CSAM images being used to train these models, right?

[00:30:56] Karim Rajwani And you say, well, they're, you know, not real, but you know, what the stats show is habitual porn viewers, you know, 65% of habitual porn viewers become CSAM viewers.

[00:31:14] Karim Rajwani And of which 37% see contact with children.

[00:31:20] Karim Rajwani And the more CSAM material that is out there, the more normalized it gets.

[00:31:27] Karim Rajwani And you know, what we are seeing, again, with the Internet Watch Foundation in the UK is, you know, around half of 10 year olds, it was self generated.

[00:31:40] Karim Rajwani Oh, really?

[00:31:42] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:31:42] Karim Rajwani And between sort of 16 and 17, about 92% was self generated.

[00:31:50] Karim Rajwani Wow.

[00:31:51] Karim Rajwani Right.

[00:31:52] Karim Rajwani And we are seeing de-aging of images.

[00:31:55] Karim Rajwani So you know, you can take a celebrity or any individual and de-age them and nudify them.

[00:32:02] Karim Rajwani And, you know, legislation is still a work in progress.

[00:32:09] Karim Rajwani Even understanding of what a Gen AI image is, you know, what is a CSAM.

[00:32:14] Karim Rajwani How to even spot it for your average person in the street, you know.

[00:32:19] Karim Rajwani And, you know, up to, I think up to 80% of law enforcement had trouble, depending on the country, up to 80% had trouble identifying or spotting Gen AI, CSAM, for example.

[00:32:31] Karim Rajwani And this is only going to get harder as the technology gets better.

[00:32:37] Karim Rajwani Well, let me ask you this, because I remember talking about normalization, right?

[00:32:43] Karim Rajwani And talking about law enforcement and talking about resources to combat it.

[00:32:49] Karim Rajwani Several years ago, I remember having an argument on a radio program with the chief constable in this country at that time, who was the lead for safeguarding for child protection, who said, quote, at least in this country, there's at least 100,000, mainly men, sitting at home downloading child pornography.

[00:33:14] Karim Rajwani And we just haven't got the resources to deal with it.

[00:33:18] Karim Rajwani Now, okay, that was one thing.

[00:33:20] Karim Rajwani But then he went on to say something that I absolutely got furious about.

[00:33:24] Karim Rajwani He said, I think really it's a matter for the health service rather than law enforcement.

[00:33:29] Karim Rajwani And I thought, well, that's ridiculous because, you know, they don't do it in isolation for a start, apart from the fact that it's a criminal offense and so on, so on, so on.

[00:33:37] Karim Rajwani You know, I mean, and they live in families where children get abused, they live in communities where they actually go out and abuse children as well.

[00:33:44] Karim Rajwani So I mean, it's just a ridiculous thing.

[00:33:46] Karim Rajwani But the key in there was they really didn't know what to do because they just didn't have the resources to cope with this growing tsunami of a problem.

[00:33:57] Karim Rajwani Yeah, a lot to pack in there.

[00:34:01] Karim Rajwani So I don't want to be criticizing the law enforcement officer, particularly I'll be in the UK in the next couple of weeks.

[00:34:12] Karim Rajwani No, no, that was just one person's kind of rather not panicked view, but kind of, you know, what can we do?

[00:34:18] Karim Rajwani I think I understand sort of her perspective.

[00:34:25] Karim Rajwani One, I would 100% agree law enforcement is not resourced enough to deal with it, whether, you know, we're talking this issue or a number of other issues.

[00:34:37] Karim Rajwani You know, if you compare what the banking industry spends versus what law enforcement spends, you know, it's a drop in the ocean.

[00:34:45] Karim Rajwani It's like pocket change.

[00:34:47] Karim Rajwani Two, I think there is a role, greater role for health services on the victims and helping victims, because the trauma is a lifetime trauma.

[00:35:00] Karim Rajwani I believe, you know, for somebody to admit to the fact that they were, you know, abused as a child,

[00:35:12] Karim Rajwani The average age at which they admit it is around 50, 52.

[00:35:17] Karim Rajwani It's a lifelong trauma, right?

[00:35:21] Karim Rajwani So, you know, there needs to be better help for them.

[00:35:24] Karim Rajwani I don't know whether enough research has been done on the perpetrators to say what's driving this.

[00:35:31] Karim Rajwani But, you know, schools need to educate more.

[00:35:35] Karim Rajwani We need to educate our kids more.

[00:35:37] Karim Rajwani And most importantly, technology needs to play a bigger role.

[00:35:43] Karim Rajwani You know, there are capabilities today to identify, monitor, take it down.

[00:35:49] Karim Rajwani So some of the answers you're saying really are, which is I suppose a fairly obvious thing, but for people to realize,

[00:35:55] Karim Rajwani Some of the answers are actually within the technology itself in terms of combating this.

[00:36:03] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:36:05] Karim Rajwani Okay.

[00:36:06] Karim Rajwani Listen, we've got about another, oh, I don't know, five or so minutes, but I wanted to ask you about kind of training and certification course that you mentioned.

[00:36:16] Karim Rajwani Could you just give us a little bit of a background on that?

[00:36:20] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:36:20] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:36:20] Karim Rajwani So, you know, the good news is that there's a lot of training, free training available on this.

[00:36:28] Karim Rajwani And I'll just mention a few and I'll mention a few sites you can go to.

[00:36:32] Karim Rajwani Can I have some, when do I do it?

[00:36:34] Karim Rajwani You know, the front page of our podcast, I'll put any links that you give me on it for people if you've got any to give.

[00:36:42] Karim Rajwani Sure, yeah.

[00:36:42] Karim Rajwani I'll do that for people so they don't have to sort of madly rush off and get a pen right now or anything like that.

[00:36:51] Karim Rajwani Absolutely.

[00:36:52] Karim Rajwani Absolutely.

[00:36:52] Karim Rajwani I'll send you the link later today after our chat.

[00:36:57] Karim Rajwani So one is an organization called the Anti-Human Trafficking Intelligence Initiative.

[00:37:02] Karim Rajwani Mm hmm.

[00:37:03] Karim Rajwani And they do a series of training sessions, webinars.

[00:37:09] Karim Rajwani I just participated in it.

[00:37:11] Karim Rajwani So that's one of them.

[00:37:13] Karim Rajwani They're available on YouTube.

[00:37:18] Karim Rajwani The Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists have actually a certification course around this.

[00:37:28] Karim Rajwani And, you know, in terms of where do I go to learn more, get more information, self-help guides, etc.

[00:37:38] Karim Rajwani The International Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

[00:37:43] Karim Rajwani If you're in Canada, the Canadian Center for Child Protection, because they do have a lot of material on their websites for individuals to educate themselves.

[00:37:55] Karim Rajwani The Internet Watch Foundation, you know, and SVCC in this country to have stuff.

[00:38:02] Karim Rajwani Exactly.

[00:38:03] Karim Rajwani And SVCC in the UK, the, you know, various modern slavery helplines in the UK.

[00:38:12] Karim Rajwani In the UK, you've got the Met Police, you know, the, what's the UK website, modernslavery.gov.uk.

[00:38:23] Karim Rajwani And there are a number of others which, you know, we can't have.

[00:38:27] Karim Rajwani No, no, I mean, I think that's terrific food for thought.

[00:38:30] Karim Rajwani I mean, and interestingly enough, the next guest I'm going to have on the program that will probably be a podcast, I hope, about a week after you go out, is a woman, Kate Garbers, who I'm going to be reviewing her book, Unseen Lives, The Hidden World of Modern Slavery.

[00:38:49] Karim Rajwani And she worked for, at one point, she worked for Unseen, which is the leading UK charity in terms of anti-slavery.

[00:38:57] Karim Rajwani I don't know if you've ever worked with them or talked with them.

[00:39:01] Karim Rajwani I haven't, but I certainly would love to.

[00:39:05] Karim Rajwani But I mean, like I said, so there's going to be a bit of continuity there as far as the UK is concerned.

[00:39:12] Karim Rajwani But I mean, so much of what you said to think about here, I mean, I must be able to sort of put it on the front page and actually do it.

[00:39:21] Karim Rajwani But get back to the things that you wanted to sort of fold back on a little bit for the last few minutes.

[00:39:28] Karim Rajwani Some of it, the pig butchering side of it.

[00:39:33] Karim Rajwani Did you want to talk about more protection or is it mainly a case of kind of sharing and swallowing your embarrassment, to be quite frank?

[00:39:40] Karim Rajwani So the sextortion you mean, with the sextortion, like I said, don't give any money.

[00:39:52] Karim Rajwani Talk to somebody.

[00:39:53] Karim Rajwani There are organizations that will walk you through every step of the way.

[00:39:59] Karim Rajwani You know, you're not alone.

[00:40:02] Karim Rajwani Please don't resort to self-harm.

[00:40:05] Karim Rajwani With sextortion, if you don't know the number, block them.

[00:40:09] Karim Rajwani Don't give any information out.

[00:40:12] Karim Rajwani If it's too good to be true, then it generally is.

[00:40:15] Karim Rajwani Yes.

[00:40:16] Karim Rajwani You will certainly make money the first time around.

[00:40:20] Karim Rajwani Small, you'll make $500, say $500, and it'll gradually drag you in.

[00:40:26] Karim Rajwani Remember, these guys are professionals.

[00:40:29] Karim Rajwani They've been doing this for a very long time.

[00:40:32] Karim Rajwani And thousands of people, whether they be professionals, bankers, doctors,

[00:40:39] you know, whoever, get conned into this.

[00:40:42] Karim Rajwani So, you know, it's not that you're stupid.

[00:40:45] Karim Rajwani It's that these guys are professionals.

[00:40:48] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:40:49] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:40:49] Karim Rajwani Absolutely.

[00:40:50] Karim Rajwani So, how do you see things developing over the next six months?

[00:40:56] Karim Rajwani Let's say, for example, I mean, are you, have you got any optimism to offer at all?

[00:41:03] Karim Rajwani It's going to be, honestly, it's going to be a slog for, for,

[00:41:09] for all of us because at the rate at which it's growing is challenging.

[00:41:19] Karim Rajwani I think we've still all got to do what we're doing.

[00:41:23] Karim Rajwani In fact, a bigger effort.

[00:41:26] Karim Rajwani You know, come together as an industry, come together as, you know, financial

[00:41:30] service industry, think about consortiums.

[00:41:33] Karim Rajwani Technology can play, you know, the big technology players can play a major role.

[00:41:44] Karim Rajwani Some people argue didn't really go far enough, but I understand your point.

[00:41:56] Karim Rajwani Right.

[00:41:57] Karim Rajwani It's to say, well, you know, you look at other countries and, you know, UK, yes, it may not have gone far enough.

[00:42:04] Karim Rajwani But you know, and I was actually at the UN and the response from some other countries was, was polling.

[00:42:13] Karim Rajwani The UK has done something.

[00:42:15] Karim Rajwani And I think a number of other countries are following suit.

[00:42:19] Karim Rajwani I think that's well needed.

[00:42:22] Karim Rajwani Slowly, slowly, slowly, eh?

[00:42:25] Karim Rajwani Yes.

[00:42:25] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:42:26] Karim Rajwani There is no magic bullet quick, quick solution to this.

[00:42:29] Karim Rajwani No.

[00:42:31] Karim Rajwani No.

[00:42:32] Karim Rajwani And all the time more and more and more people are becoming, because the world is a tiny place when you think about technology's reach.

[00:42:41] Karim Rajwani Yeah.

[00:42:43] Karim Rajwani Karim, I think we've come to the end of it, not the end of what I could talk to you about, because I honestly, genuinely could listen to some of what you're saying for hours to come, because there's just so much to consider.

[00:42:57] Karim Rajwani I think the best thing to do is to get this out, and we'll listen to Kate Garbers next week as well.

[00:43:05] But also, maybe you'd come back in six or nine months again and give us an update.

[00:43:10] Karim Rajwani Okay, perfect.

[00:43:11] That would be great.

[00:43:13] Karim Rajwani Okay, well, look, for now, right, just for now, Karim Rajwani, I really appreciate your time and your effort and your work.

[00:43:24] Karim Rajwani So thanks ever so much for being on the programme, and speak to you very soon.

[00:43:30] Karim Rajwani Thank you, David, talk to you soon.

[00:43:33] Karim Rajwani Okay, hang on.