Hundreds of leads uncovered in coordinated push against cyber-enabled migrant smuggling

Ten countries* have taken part in a three-day hackathon, organized by INTERPOL and Europol, which resulted in the identification of hundreds of incidents, URLs, user handles and phone numbers potentially linked to cyber-enabled smuggling of migrants.

Operation Cyberprotect II, held in October at INTERPOL’s headquarters in Lyon, brought together 15 police officers from Europe and northern Africa to identify and investigate online migrant smuggling activities, with the aim of disrupting criminal networks operating across the Mediterranean region. During the operation, co-organized by INTERPOL and Europol, officers from participating countries worked side by side to extract data from websites, social media platforms and messaging apps.

The preliminary results from the three-day probe led to the detection of 269 unique user handles and URLs across various social media and messaging platforms as well as 79 potential facilitators and smugglers.

INTERPOL said the investigations revealed “qualitative intelligence on those who advertise, offer, negotiate, organize and facilitate irregular migration online”. This included:

• Dozens of social media accounts promoting or offering facilitation for crossings from Türkiye or northern Africa to various European countries by boat.
• Several examples of messaging accounts offering fake passports and IDs.
• Groups advertising crossings for a range of prices, ranging from EUR 1,400 (from France to UK), and EUR 4,000 (from Greece to France), up to EUR 12,000 (Libya to Italy).
• Scraped messaging accounts and groups that provided advice, routes and guidance for people attempting to enter Europe irregularly.
• Multiple hits of telephone numbers, usernames and other data against INTERPOL and Europol databases.

“INTERPOL analysis shows that migrant smuggling is increasingly facilitated by online tools,” said David Caunter, Director of Organized and Emerging Crime at INTERPOL. “Collaborating in real time provides police with a unique opportunity to develop emerging investigations and gather vital intelligence that will be used to initiate new cases and support ongoing ones. This work is crucial in helping member countries dismantle the criminal networks that profit from vulnerable people and expose them to risk.”

During Operation Cyberprotect II, participating officers were supported by INTERPOL’s capabilities in facial recognition, cybercrime and criminal analysis. Hundreds of data points, including 176 facial images were also crosschecked against INTERPOL’s databases.

Meanwhile, Europol deployed a specialist and an analyst to Lyon during the exercise, while a team of Open Source Intelligence experts supported from Europol headquarters in the Hague.

META, S2W and the University of Malta provided support to the hackathon. It was financed by Europol and the European Union under the Project Himaya framework.

*Cyprus, France, Italy, Libya, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, The Netherlands, Tunisia and the United Kingdom