'Hackathon' uncovers 27 trafficking victims on subscription content sites
UK investigators were among 14 officers from seven countries who spent four days at INTERPOL’s Lyon headquarters last month picking apart subscription-based content platforms for signs of human trafficking and sexual exploitation — work that surfaced 34 suspicious cases, 18 suspect profiles and 27 potential victims.
Operation CyberProtect III, held from 19 to 22 May and co-organised by Interpol and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), targeted what investigators describe as an emerging trafficking model: organised crime groups posing as modelling agencies to recruit women, minors and vulnerable adults, then taking control of their accounts on content subscription platforms once they’re signed up.
The UK was one of seven participating countries, alongside Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Ukraine. Interpol’s National Central Bureau in Manchester, run by the National Crime Agency, is the UK’s standing link into this kind of operation, though Interpol has not detailed what the UK contingent specifically uncovered.
The pattern investigators are tracking starts with a recruitment pitch and ends in coercion: once a victim’s account is under the trafficker’s control, the group keeps the bulk of the earnings while ramping up psychological pressure to push production of increasingly explicit material. Interpol flagged the method in a Purple Notice — used to share information on the modus operandi of crime groups — back in February.
Among the findings from the four-day exercise:
- A high concentration of advertisements featuring models from South America, pointing to the region as a significant source of both real and virtual exploitation
- Recruiters working through encrypted messaging apps, including requests for nude images with no age verification in place
- A trade in content producers themselves — one messaging group dedicated to this was found to hold up to 28,000 adverts
- Payment via cryptocurrency and “diamond” emojis convertible to virtual currency, with rates as low as $3 for 25 minutes of private video
- Coaching programmes marketed to men teaching them to profit from exploiting women on subscription platforms — a practice investigators are calling “e-pimping”
- AI-generated fake profiles being used alongside human-run accounts
David Caunter, Interpol’s Director of Organized and Emerging Crime, said the hackathon format had generated immediate investigative leads. “Every suspect and victim identification generates immediate investigative leads and strengthens our ability to dismantle these criminal networks and protect those at risk,” he said.
The operation drew support from Europol, Group-IB, Meta, S2W, TikTok and anti-trafficking groups including Stop the Traffik and Diaconía, along with the Dutch National Rapporteur on Trafficking in Human Beings and Sexual Violence against Children.
CyberProtect III is the latest in a series of Interpol hackathons targeting cyber-enabled trafficking; an earlier iteration in 2024 focused on victims lured from Latin America into exploitation in Europe, while a second phase in October 2025 turned to migrant smuggling networks operating across the Mediterranean.