WhatsApp's RICO Liability for Providing Material Support to Human Trafficking and Pig Butchering Scam Syndicates.
PICDO, Inc. “Public International Cybercrime Disruption Organization” is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public benefit corporation. Author: Michael Roberts, Founder
Connect with me: Linkedin.com/in/michaelroberts777/
This notice is served upon you due to your persistent provision of material support in the furtherance of racketeering crimes under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”) 18 U.S.C § 1961, for which 47 U.S. C. § 230(c) is not a defense.
This notice may appear, on its face, to be adversarial. However, it is as much an invitation for urgent yet friendly dialogue with Meta, as it is a stern, preemptive, amicus brief(ish) cease and desist demand commensurate with the urgency of the matter, and in the interest of the tens of thousands of human trafficking victims that are described herein and WHO ARE AT META’S MERCY and are being tortured by their captives.
BACKGROUND: PICDO, Inc. “Public International Cybercrime Disruption Organization” is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public benefit corporation. The purpose of the corporation is to:
Save people from human-trafficking every year by disrupting cybercrime syndicate infrastructure, at its source, at scale, and at the beginning, without relying on glacially slow criminal prosecution responses.
Reduce the burden on government law enforcement agencies.
Disrupt cybercrime and human-trafficking through:
Education
Encouraging first responder reform within the abuse teams for major platforms
Currently, META supports human trafficking in a variety of ways. This support comes primarily through WhatsApp messenger app accounts that Chinese, West African, and other regional cyber scam syndicates use. META’s Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and META Business API services are provided to international organized crime syndicates at best without adequate due diligence and duty of care controls, or at worst, with wilful blindness, particularly in light of META’s stated ANTI-SLAVERY AND HUMAN TRAFFICKING STATEMENT 2022
Also, there is a low barrier to entry for criminals to use META's products. This, along with META's lack of proactive cybercrime disruption responses and its refusal to work with private and public anti-trafficking organizations in a timely manner, contributes directly to the growth of these multi-billion dollar-a-year criminal organizations.
META's apparent wilful blindness to its participation in these criminal enterprises directly supports the kidnapping and trafficking of an estimated 100,000 slaves in Cambodian cyberscam boiler rooms alone, not to mention the unknown number of slaves in Nigeria, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, and elsewhere.
The undersigned is not a lawyer. Notwithstanding, in the ordinary reading of the words, it seems WhatsApp/Meta is in breach of US Rico law, and similar laws globally.
The United States Supreme Court in Salinas v. United States, 522 U.S. 52 (1997), made it clear that RICO does not require the plaintiff to prove that the defendant (i.e., prospectively META) agreed to personally commit two predicate acts of racketeering. The Supreme Court explained one way to prove a RICO conspiracy by stating that:
“A conspiracy may exist even if a conspirator does not agree to commit or facilitate each and every part of the substantive offense.”
Id. at 63.
“A Distinct Evil”
The partners in the criminal plan must agree to pursue the same criminal objective and may divide up the work, yet each is responsible for the acts of each other. See Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640, 646 (1946) (“And, so long as the partnership in crime continues, the partners act for each other in carrying it forward”). If conspirators have a plan which calls for some conspirators to perpetrate the crime and others to provide support, [then] the supporters (i.e. META) are as guilty as the perpetrators. As Justice Holmes observed: “[P]lainly a person may conspire for the commission of a crime by a third person.” United States v. Holte, 236 U.S. 140, 144 (1915). . . . “A conspirator must intend to further an endeavor which, if completed, would satisfy all of the elements of a substantive criminal offense, but it suffices that he adopt the goal of furthering or facilitating the criminal endeavor. He may do so in any number of ways short of agreeing to undertake all of the acts necessary for the crime’s completion.
"One can be a conspirator by agreeing to facilitate only some of the acts leading to the substantive offense. “
It is elementary that a conspiracy may exist and be punished whether or not the substantive crime ensues,
“for the conspiracy is a distinct evil, dangerous to the public, and so punishable in itself.” Salinas, 236 U.S. at 65 (citation omitted).
Legal Precedent: The Unspoken Meeting of the Minds between WhatsApp Admin and the Criminals
“… the supporters are as guilty as the perpetrators.”
“If the government can prove an agreement on an overall objective, it need not prove a defendant (i.e. Meta) personally agreed to commit two predicate acts.” United States v. Abbell, 271 F.3d 1286, 1299 (11th Cir. 2001); accord United States v. Cornell, 780 F.3d 616, 624 (4th Cir. 2015); United States v. Delgado, 401 F.3d 290,296 (5th Cir. 2005); United States v. To, 144 F.3d 737,744 (11th Cir. 1998); United States v. Starrett, 55 F.3d 1525,1544 (11th Cir. 1995); see also United States v. Cain, 671 F.3d 271, 285 (2d Cir. 2012) (holding that § 1962(d) requires proof that “the conspirators reached a meeting of the minds as to the operation of the affairs of the enterprise through a pattern racketeering conduct” (quoting United States v. Basciano, 599 F.3d 184, 199 (2d Cir. 2010)). To prove the conspiratorial agreement under the first method, the Government must prove that the defendant personally agreed to commit at least two racketeering acts in furtherance of the conduct of the affairs of the enterprise. See cases cited in n.174 above. In that regard, where “the evidence establishes that each defendant, over a period of years, committed several acts of racketeering activity in furtherance of the enterprise’s affairs, the inference of an agreement to do so is unmistakable.” United States v. Elliott, 571 F.2d 880, 903 (5th Cir. 1978); accord United States v. Perry, 2013 WL 6795021 (W.D. N.C. 2013); United States v. Perea, 625 F. Supp.2d 327, 335 (W.D. Texas 2009); United States v. Luong, 215 Fed.Appx. 639, 644(9th Cir. 2006).
WhatsApp Provides a Target Rich Environment for Scammers
Each and every one of WhatsApp’s 2.4 billion monthly users is a target for the organized crime syndicates. Although there are many pretexts used, the most common is the “wrong number” text message introduction. The human cost is outlined in the undersigned's substack post here:
https://picdo.substack.com/p/how-whatsapp-provides-material-support
Whatsapp User statistics reference: https://about.fb.com/news/2020/02/two-billion-users/
META can drastically reduce the demand for new kidnappings
If META follows the respectful suggestions below, cybercrime gangs will be much less successful and make much less money to fund new kidnappings.
By stopping the WhatsApp grooming scam before law enforcement can get involved, the scammers will have to spend millions of dollars and tens of thousands of hours rebuilding their communications infrastructure over and over again.
By drastically reducing the efficacy of the current WhatsApp scam methods and by raising the barrier to entry for these crimes, there will be an immediate reduction in the demand for kidnappings, and the organized crime syndicates will have to work much harder to successfully scam people to finance said human trafficking. Crime bosses will be forced back onto less popular platforms such as Telegram, Signal, WeChat etc., which will, in turn, reduce the pool of scam victim targets, thus reducing the human trafficking work force needed to effect the scams.
Immediate Remedies Available
PICDO respectfully suggests that META implement policy reforms to reduce its liability under RICO and other laws, both foreign and domestic. This would require the following immediate changes as demanded by the exigent circumstances:
Transparent Cooperation with cybercrime and anti-human trafficking NGOs
The undersigned is the founder of both PICDO, Inc (2022) and Rexxfield Cyber Investigation Services (2008). With only a few exceptions, he has been frustrated by META's refusal to work with his team to stop cybercrimes that are happening on its platform in real time. This pattern of conduct is not unique to META; all major social media and communication providers seem to have bottom-line-profit dictated policies, which are in some cases diametrically opposed to their respective published terms of service. (See Googliath.org)
Do not wait for glacially slow prosecution processes
While META’s desire to be a champion of free speech is noble, the fact remains that, according to some experts, less than 3 in 100,000 cyber crimes are prosecuted in the USA [Ref]. Furthermore, despite the best intentions of Special Agents within the US Department of Justice agencies, such as FBI, USS and DHS, only a fraction of the cyber crimes reported through IC3.gov are substantially investigated. As a result, the foreign and domestic criminal groups that META helps by giving them essential services, act as if they are above the law. It is therefore incumbent on META to work with NGOs to act swiftly on the intelligence and evidence they provide to disrupt the cybercrime syndicates early, before the victim grooming process can be successfully completed.
Pattern Matching Account Suspension
When NGO’s such as PICDO report intelligence, META must give feedback. This will encourage the volunteers to continue the good fight.
If a criminal activity report about a WhatsApp account number comes from a reliable source, it should be blocked immediately until the user provides reasonable Know Your Customer (KYC)-type verification. This, of course, is a tricky balance between privacy/free speech, and criminal activities.
IP Address Pattern Matching
The IP address log files and user agent details for each and every number reported should be cross referenced using pattern matching, to identify criminal use of META’s infrastructure. For example:
When multiple WhatsApp accounts regularly connect to the same IP address or IP address block range, and one or more of those accounts have been flagged for criminal activity, this is a clear indication of a human trafficking boiler room. This would allow the mass suspension or restriction of all the associated accounts. The disruptive impact of such proactive policies cannot be overstated, as each WhatsApp account could be in the process of grooming hundreds or thousands of individual WhatsApp users for financial or romance scams. The disruption value is immense.
Auto Response Scam Alert for all contacts of Criminal Accounts
As soon as a specific WhatsApp account number is suspended for abuse, WhatsApp servers should be provisioned to send an immediate warning message to each and every WhatsApp user who has chatted with the criminal account, or to the related accounts within Meta’s suite of apps and platforms. The broadcast message should appear to come from the suspended account and read something to the effect:
SCAM WARNING!
This account has been suspended on suspicion of fraudulent activity. It is likely that the suspected scammer will attempt to contact you again with a different number to keep the conversation going. Never follow investment advice or send money to someone you do not know, as you may be a victim of “grooming” by a romance or financial advice scammer. Do your homework, be careful, and review our article titled “How WhatsApp is used by criminals to scam billions of dollars every year” here: https://www.whatsapp.com/how-whatsApp-is-used-by-criminals-to-scam-billions-of-dollars-every-year (This is a suggestion)
Pop up alerts for all individual and group chats suspected of criminal activity (Like Telegram)
WhatsApp could show warnings similar to the one pictured below:
META Business API Account Suspension
The undersigned has investigated many cases where sophisticated scam syndicates use Meta’s premium App development suite of services to deploy custom scam apps. Using Meta Business Suite, scam bosses can monitor the WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook chats between hundreds of slaves and their prospective victims in real time, even to the point of transparently transferring “suckers” to higher-level staff when it is evident that the lower-level slaves successfully have them on the hook, so to speak. Meta business suite chat monitoring is also used to control the slaves, and punish them if they seek help from the outside, or make mistakes in the victim grooming process.
This is another opportunity for mass scam disruption.
YOU CAN HELP!
Next steps:
Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss how we can, together, reduce the suffering and prevalence of human trafficking immediately.
Respectfully,
Michael Roberts
Founder - PICDO, Inc
meta.reform.team@picdo.org