Social media platforms now report four times as many child-sex-assault photo and video cases to Wyoming’s statewide law enforcement agency than they did five years ago, authorities say.
Social media sites in 2018 reported to a national clearinghouse 199 cyber tips that led back to Wyoming, Chris McDonald, commander of the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force for Wyoming, told lawmakers during a Joint Judiciary Committee meeting Monday.
In 2022, there were four times as many, or 792 cyber tips with Wyoming IP addresses.
McDonald attributes the rise initially to schools and businesses being shut down in 2020.
“We had more suspects’ access, we also had more children’s access,” to the Internet, he said. “This is in no way an indictment of the home schooling, but if we just have kids at home more, online more – that was the thought.”
But the agency saw a 40% increase in cyber tips from 2021 to 2022, McDonald said. That was more than a year after schools and businesses reopened.
McDonald credited the more sophisticated methods of detecting child sex images on social media platforms for the continuing rise in calls for service.
100% Conviction Rate
Cyber tips call police into reactive work, rather than proactive, said McDonald.
“It is a call for service,” he said. “Not every single one turns into a case. But every single one has to be vetted and sent out.”
Cyber tips led to 21 arrests in 2019 and 40 in 2022, McDonald said.
Rep. Mark Jennings, R-Sheridan, asked how the conviction rate is on those arrests.
McDonald said ICAC’s conviction rate on arrested suspects is 100%.
Rep. Ember Oakley, R-Riverton, who is a prosecutor, said ICAC cases are solid investigations.
“I just do the paperwork,” she said. “The case is going to go to conviction because of the work you do. Thank you for your work.”
McDonald said the ICAC unit works cyber tip cases daily with six agents in the task force. He said the increase in cyber tips makes it harder for the agents to take on undercover, or more proactive investigations.
Before 2019 the task force worked “vastly” in undercover cases, McDonald said, but now works very few.
The Rescue
The agents also prioritize cases with “live victims,” or children actively being assaulted or exploited whom police can save by securing a quick arrest, said McDonald.
He touted the case of Joseph Picanco, whose photograph of a preschooler being sexually violated sparked an arrest in Massachusetts.
Picanco had been sharing his homemade child sex images online, according to court documents.
The Massachusetts state police contacted Wyoming DCI saying the images they found on a suspect’s phone there appeared to have been produced in Green River, Wyoming.
McDonald called his agents in Rock Springs, who worked with the Green River Police and Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office.
“We actually were able to identify the child and get the person in custody in less than two hours,” said McDonald. “That was, to my knowledge, a record for us. And certainly those guys in Rock Springs don’t let us forget about that, but it was an amazing case.”
A Sweetwater County District Court judge this month sentenced Picanco to between 15 and 24 years in prison.
Deepfake Whack-A-Mole
McDonald said the DCI task force has been confronting pornographic deepfakes, or images and videos suspects have altered to look like pornography.
One suspect got into a female’s snapchat story by creating a username nearly indistinguishable from her friend’s username. The suspect saved a “completely innocent bathing suit image” of the female, said McDonald, but then altered it to create a graphically sexual image that looked like her.
“(He) sent it back to our victim saying if you don’t send me more actual images and videos I’m going to post this to the school and everything else,” he said.
The suspect used something other than photo-editing program Photoshop to alter the female’s picture, said McDonald, adding that DCI’s challenge was working through the relatively new technology to solve the case.
“Technology is an arms race,” he said. “Every time we feel like we get somewhere, something else is created. It’s almost the worst case of whack-a-mole you’ve ever played in your life.”
Sextortion cases are also on the rise, McDonald said. Often people posing as attractive women online will convince minor-aged boys to make sexually explicit images and videos of themselves, then blackmail the boys for more.
Your Wish List
Committee Co-Chair Sen. Bill Landen, R-Casper, asked McDonald if Wyoming’s laws are adequate to equip the task force.
McDonald said generally they’re adequate, but he would like to see higher minimum penalties for repeat child sex predators.
He also said he’d like the law to address computer-generated (CGI) cartoon sex scenes that look like sexual assaults on children but are in fact cartoons.
“We get so much anime,” he said. “The CGI animation can be almost indistinguishable.”
McDonald said he hopes the law can “clean up that language more to make that a clearly-defined violation.”
U.S. Supreme Court case law may stand in the way of outlawing cartoon depictions of child sex scenes, however. The high court in Ashcroft vs. Free Speech Coalition ruled that “virtual child pornography” is not child sexual assault material. The court struck down a 1996 law banning such cartoons as a violation of the First Amendment.
Clair McFarland can be reached at: Clair@CowboyStateDaily.com
