INTERPOL announced the results of Operation Jackal IV, a coordinated effort running from November 2025 to June 2026 across 22 countries on six continents, which resulted in 58 arrests targeting West African organised crime groups including Black Axe. These groups are responsible for a significant share of the world's cyber-enabled financial fraud, including romance scams, cryptocurrency and investment scams, and business email compromise fraud. The operation revealed a critical emerging trend: a rise in West African organised crime groups using sextortion to target minors, with victims as young as 14. Offenders typically contact minors via social media, build trust and coerce them into sharing explicit images or videos, then threaten to distribute the material to the victim's contacts unless a ransom is paid. INTERPOL facilitated cross-border coordination, intelligence sharing, analysis, and specialised training to enhance international money laundering investigations.
A targeted real-time detection system intercepts the orchestration phase before coercion succeeds. Guardii monitors children's direct messages across platforms including Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox, with a dedicated anti-sextortion module that identifies trust-building followed by escalating requests, flags pressure and extortion language, and blocks or surfaces the contact to a parent or authority before explicit material is produced. As a world-leading AI online-safety platform, Guardii detects threat patterns rather than reading every message, enabling intervention at the point where the offender is still cultivating the victim and before the child is leveraged into compliance or payment.
