NAB has taken an industry-leading role in the fight against sextortion, a form of sexual exploitation and online blackmail that involves threats to share sexual images or videos of the victim unless they comply with the perpetrator’s demands.
Demands are often for money, more images or sexual favours.
Since 2022, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) led – Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE) has identified sextortion of minors as an emerging human impact threat in Australia. Overseas criminals are increasingly targeting Australian minors, coercing them to share sexually explicit content and then extorting money from them.
In response, the ACCCE and Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) Child Sexual Exploitation Response Team (CSERT) partnered to target these criminals, under a project named Operation Huntsman.
When Georgia Brookes, Head of Financial Crime Investigations (FCI), heard that the ACCCE and AUSTRAC requested assistance from Australian banks, including NAB, to help combat the ongoing threats and societal impacts of sextortion in Australia, she knew she wanted to get involved.
“Anyone can become a victim of sextortion, regardless of age or gender, but children are often targeted. All it requires is online access,” Georgia, a former AFP officer, said.
“Alarmingly, thousands of Australian children fall victim to sextortion every year, with some facing an extreme risk of self-harm or suicide.”
In 2023, NAB collaborated with the ACCCE to help identify victims of sextortion, especially juveniles, using fraud detection rules of customer transactions.
The FCI and Fraud Prevention and Detection (FPD) teams at NAB developed near real-time customer transaction alerts to identify previously unknown juvenile victims of sextortion.
Josie Francese, Head of FPD, said, “We’re using the data in our fraud management system to create daily alerts for potential juvenile victims of sextortion.”
These alerts are reviewed by the FCI team, including
Katelyn Allen, Manager FCI before being transitioned to the FCI Police Requests (PR) team.
“We review sextortion alerts daily, looking for signs of adverse activity in customers transactions, closing ones that were not, and referring ones that were,” she said.
“The Police Requests team then refer to the ACCCE when potential victims are identified. This process enables them to proactively contact child victims quickly, to minimise the risk of self-harm.”
Through our collaboration with law enforcement agencies, NAB is making a significant impact in the fight against sextortion and a real difference in the lives of vulnerable customers, demonstrating the power of customer obsession.
“NAB is currently the only bank in Australia that has implemented these alerts to prevent and disrupt sextortion,” said Georgia.
The ACCCE advised “NAB have continued to lead the banking sector in the provision of direct support to Child Exploitation. The NAB-ACCCE partnership is a great example of the crime prevention, deterrence and victim support outcomes that can be achieved when law enforcement and industry collaborate in the national interest.”
The Federal Government’s eSafety Commissioner also plays a key role preventing sextortion. Through its reporting team and working with law enforcement like the AFP, it can help children and families have who had naked or sexual images shared online without consent.
More broadly, it has a range of resources for parents, teachers and schools covering the warning signs, how to tackle blackmail and case studies.
