International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2020 | Page 107

International Journal on Criminology
agency specializing in travel between China, the United States, and Canada. At
this time, it is unknown what role, if any, this travel service played in the operation.
Through mapping the entities and other strings of content using OSINT, the
identified network was linked to an additional 350,000 escort advertisements and
fifty-five websites in more than twenty-five cities in the United States, Canada, and
Australia. Eventually, these hundreds of thousands of Backpage escort advertisements
were identified with one key individual, a facilitator.
Discussion of the Case
Two years after the submission of the OSINT network analysis stemming
from the San Francisco Backpage advertisement to a federal law enforcement
agency, seven Chinese nationals were indicted in relation to the network
in November 2018. According to the indictments, the “Supermatchescort”
network operated in fifty-eight cities throughout the United States, Canada, and
Australia, primarily through escort advertisements on Backpage and escort agency
websites. In the OSINT network analysis conducted, half of these city-based operations
were identified. 24 In addition, with the OSINT provided to law enforcement,
the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized more than five hundred web domains
associated with the operation of the network. 25
The indictments confirmed many of the suspicions around the supply
chain for the network, its operation, and the trafficking activity found through the
OSINT network analysis. The primary defendant supervised a cadre of localized
dispatchers stationed in each city and orchestrated the flow of people and money
throughout the United States, Canada, and Australia. He facilitated the procurement
of property for residential brothels, the recruitment of victims from China
through WeChat, and enforced a communication system through WeChat specific
to the trafficking operation in each city for locally based dispatchers. Through
WeChat, this key facilitator provided the mechanism used by the locally based
dispatchers to schedule appointments with sex buyers, transport victims, and facilitate
trafficking in sexual exploitation. WeChat was essential to the operation of
this criminal enterprise and shows the role of emerging technologies in current
human trafficking operations.
The primary defendant implemented a customer relationship management
database that contained over thirty thousand records of commercial sex buyers.
These records retained customer contact information and details regarding specif-
24 United States of America v. Zongtao Chen a.k.a. Mark Chen, Weixuan Zhou, Yan Wang a.k.a. Sarah,
Ting Fu, Chaodan Wang, November 15, 2018, https://www.justice.gov/usao-or/press-release/file/
1124296/download.
25 Department of Justice, US Attorney’s Office, District of Oregon, “Nationwide Sting Operation Targets
Illegal Asian Brothels, Six Indicted for Racketeering,” January 16, 2019, https://www.justice.gov/
usao-or/pr/nationwide-sting-operation-targets-illegal-asian-brothels-six-indicted-racketeering.
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