PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The FBI is warning the public about a large international cybercrime ring called “The Community,” or “The Com” for short, that targets teens and young adults as both victims and recruits.
Ransomware attacks, swatting, cryptocurrency theft, extortion, sextortion — the range of crimes carried out by the crime ring is as broad as its network of thousands of young people around the world.
According to the FBI, there are multiple factions within The Com, such as Hacker Com, Extortion Com, and In Real Life (IRL) Com, comprising thousands of people around the world and in every FBI jurisdiction in the U.S.
Andrew Klopfer, assistant special agent for cyber programs in the FBI’s Philadelphia office, said The Com has spawned subgroups too, such as one called 764, which draws in adolescents for sadistic manipulation.
“There’s an encouragement to commit acts of violence that are videotaped, sexual assaults that are videotaped, animal cruelty that’s videotaped,” he said.
Klopfer said The Com targets vulnerable young people through social media and gaming sites, not only as victims but to get them to join the ring and commit crimes themselves, “because of their misperceived conceptions that juveniles will not be prosecuted,” he said.
The FBI stresses that there is help for victims. One resource is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which can remove compromising material from the internet through its Take It Down service.
Klopfer encourages anyone who has been targeted to report it to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center.