Audin Rhodes/MDN Darrik Trudell, resident agent in charge of Homeland Security investigations, speaks to Minot State University students about online predators and safety Thursday.

A resident agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations has investigated numerous child exploitation cases that have resulted in the conviction and sentencing of child predators.

Darrik Trudell was among several specialists and speakers covering a different aspect of cyber security at the NoDAKoN cyber safety event held at Minot State University Wednesday and Thursday. Trudell led the first session on Thursday titled “Online Predators and Safety.”

“The main thing we investigate up here in North Dakota is crimes against children,” Trudell said. “One of the growing trends right now is sextortion.”

Sextortion is when money or sexual favors are extorted from someone via blackmail or threats. When sextortion happens to minors, the outcomes can be devastating and even deadly for the mental health of the children involved.

“Unfortunately, kids are starting to commit suicide because they think there’s no way out,” Trudell said. “The best way that we can help is to get out and talk to people and educate them.”

Trudell discussed two different case studies where popular, happy high school students were sextorted for money. Both boys ended up taking their lives out of despair in not knowing what to do or who to turn to.

Trudell explained how it’s not realistic for parents to expect their kids to never go online or use social media and that the best thing they can do is be proactive in educating their children about what can happen and what to do if something does.

“Everyone’s answer is you take their phone away, but you’re just forcing your kids to start lying to you,” Trudell said. “As we get into the sextortion, what you’re doing is forcing your kids to not want to talk to you which is the exact opposite of what we want to have happen.”

Trudell’s presentation went into detail about the various methods and manipulations cyber predators employ to extort inappropriate images and videos of children. The criminals then use those images and videos to blackmail the children into sending money or more images.

Throughout his entire presentation, the one thing Trudell wanted people to remember was to be proactive about talking with children and loved ones.

Talking with minors about these issues and making them aware of the signs of when they’re being targeted or their friends, can make them a hard target for cyber predators and thus safer in the long run.

“We can fix this, if we get there first,” he said. “You can choose to ignore it or you can choose to engage and talk to your kids, talk to your family.”

Financial threats

Jacob Rued, fraud investigator with a local bank, led the session on “Financial Threats and Crimes.” Rued is also a licensed deputy of the Cass County Sheriff’s Office and previously worked for the Fargo Police Department as a financial crimes detective.

“People in our country and in our communities are losing a lot of money,” Rued said.

He explained how younger people are losing money more often than older people, despite how senior citizen cases are more notorious.

“(Senior citizens) just have more money to lose, which is why we hear about them more,” Rued said. “Whereas our younger folks might just have a thousand dollars. But losing that thousand dollars is the difference between making rent this month and not and is just as big of a tragedy for those people.”

Rued’s presentation covered the main tactics cyber criminals use to compromise people’s cyber security and steal their money, such as phishing, spoofing and pharming.

Phishing refers to emails that target individuals using malicious links and attachments under the guise of a genuine email. Spoofing uses email, URL and phone to authentic sources. Pharming is when malware forces you to use those spoofed websites. Once you input your password and login information into a spoofed site, your information is then compromised.

Rued also talked about how crypto currency and bitcoin ATMs are being used to manipulate people out of large sums of money. The money can be tracked using chain analysis but cannot be recovered by banks.

Rued has found through chain analysis that the sums of money collectively stolen and deposited into a single crypto currency wallet are simply too massive to account for one person, going into the high millions and even billions of dollars at times.

“What that number infers is the organization behind that scam, I would strongly argue is a nation state,” Rued said. “Or a very sophisticated criminal organization like a cartel. It’s not just some random guy in his basement doing it. It’s a very sophisticated, very well funded organization.”

Rued doesn’t consider the scams described above as true hacking. “Nobody there was hacked. Everybody there made a decision and gave out their information,” he said.

Even with all of the threats to online security, Rued believes none of the threats come close to the extreme vulnerability of using paper checks.

“Checks are fundamentally the most insecure and inefficient payment method,” he said. “The bank’s customers lose the most money with checks by far.”

“We could add up every single debit card, dispute Zellwire, ACH, everything, and we wouldn’t scratch the surface of the losses that result from checks,” Rued said. “There’s 680,000 pieces of mail stolen every single day in the United States.”

Check scams begin with criminals breaking into mailboxes or mail trucks and stealing checks. The checks are then sold on the black market to other criminals who will alter the appearance of the check using digital software.

Then the checks are often laundered unknowingly by victims who are being scammed by people posing as romantic love interests, job recruiters, businesses and more.

The main takeaway from Rued’s presentation was to be wary of giving out personal information and banking information and logins. Always double check URLs and site authenticity and contact the bank if things seem strange or if a strange message was received saying it’s the bank.

Other presentations given at the event covered included risk management, professional and personal cyber security advice and cybersecurity engineering safety.

Some of the presentations were geared specifically toward computer engineering students at MSU and were aimed at helping those students make safe and secure websites through coding and site engineering.