President Donald Trump gathered cabinet officials in the White House East Room on Wednesday to lay out what the administration says is major progress against online fraud, hacking, and sexual extortion rackets targeting Americans.
“Federal law enforcement has been able to warn over 10,000 Americans targeted for victimization, and we prevented $1.6 billion in losses at least this year,” Trump told the roundtable.
He said agents have also frozen close to $1 billion in cryptocurrency tied to foreign scam operations, shut down more than 500 fraudulent websites, and worked with tech companies to disrupt millions of accounts used by criminals operating overseas.
Targeting Sextortion Rackets
Trump singled out efforts to dismantle sexual extortion schemes that he said have devastated young victims, in some cases driving them to suicide.
“Our administration is also aggressively confronting the sexual extortion rackets that have wrecked the lives of too many young people, and in some cases even tragically led victims to take their own lives, commit suicide,” Trump said.
He credited First Lady Melania Trump with leading the bipartisan push behind the Take It Down Act, which he said passed Congress by a near-unanimous vote.
“This has been a top priority for our wonderful first lady, who led a successful bipartisan effort to pass the Take It Down Act—a big deal—and it went almost, I think, unanimously through Congress,” he said.
Executive Actions
Trump pointed to two moves he’s made this year to drive the crackdown: a March executive order directing agencies to jointly target “predatory internet schemes” and set up a victims restoration program aimed at recovering stolen money, and an August national security memorandum.
“In August, I signed a historic national security memorandum unleashing the incredible talent, tools, and resources of our private sector and companies to undertake offensive and defensive actions to stop the hackers… predators, cybercriminals, including industrial scam centers stealing from American families and American businesses,” Trump said.
Trump cited figures showing nearly three in four American adults have been hit by online scams or cyberattacks, and that Americans lost $20 billion to such schemes last year alone.
“Every American who has an aging parent or a young son or daughter has felt the anxiety of knowing that those you love are using internet service overrun by thieves and pirates, predators and foreign criminals,” he said. “Under the Trump administration, we have marshaled the full force of the federal government to combat this scourge.”
