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Yahoo
5 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
'Pimps' and websites: AI-driven system has no legal standing yet in Pa., but delivers warnings to 'customers'
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. – At noon on a regular Monday last month, a website showed about 80 sex-worker advertisements in the areas of Johnstown, Indiana and Altoona. A search in the Pittsburgh area showed a woman was willing to travel to Somerset County. Human Trafficking logo Nick Lembo, an executive director of Street Grace – a Georgia-based organization that uses a Microsoft-developed platform to disrupt human trafficking – searched the website and shared his screen over Zoom with The Tribune-Democrat. There were male and transgender categories on the website to search. Lembo went to the 'men seeking women' category, which produced a cascade of ads. 'Believe it or not, around the lunch hour can be busier,' he said. 'So it could start picking up right now in your area. And then sometimes guys are getting off work at 4 p.m., so it can start then. And I'd say most of the time, probably from 5 p.m. through 10 p.m. at night are the busiest times.' However, the women available through the ads are often not engaging in these transactions of their own volition, he said. 'Most of these women are being forced against their wills by pimps,' he said. 'There's this attitude that sex work is a legitimate profession, and these girls are just doing it on their own, and these guys (who purchase) will often say, 'Well, I know they are doing it on their own.' And the reality is, they really don't, because these girls are never going to give up their pimps. 'The pimps want to stay way in the shadows,' he said. Statistics are unclear on the scope of the human trafficking problem. Research supported by the National Institute of Justice in 2020 revealed that labor and sex trafficking data appearing in the FBI's national Uniform Crime Reporting Program may significantly understate the extent of human trafficking crimes in the United States. 'Researchers concluded that human trafficking incidents identified in law enforcement and social service agency records likely represented only a fraction of the actual incidence,' the institute's website says. 'Forcing these women' Using an artificial intelligence-human hybrid system called Transaction Intercept, Lembo and teams of civilians working with Street Grace post decoy ads on websites where men go to purchase sex. Street Grace also offers the same platform, at no cost, to law enforcement. State Sen. Cris Dush has been a proponent of using the technology in Pennsylvania; however, so far, it has not been used in the commonwealth for human trafficking prosecutions, Lembo said. Lembo and others working with Street Grace engage with men initiating conversations with their decoy ads and attempt to 'crack some humanity' into them, Lembo said. In one case, he spoke to a U.S. soldier who had returned briefly from deployment. He explained to the man that he was not law enforcement. ' 'We are here to protect you, actually, because if you are caught, this will affect you socially and professionally,' I said. That got to him,' Lembo said. 'I didn't realize it later that he was a soldier, and many guys in the military know their career is very important to them.' The soldier shared with Lembo that he 'was just looking for some comfort.' He had returned home from deployment, his girlfriend had broken up with him, and he was not scheduled to be home for long. Lembo warned him. 'I said, 'You need to be careful because there are pimps on these websites, and that's who is forcing these women,' ' Lembo said. 'He said, 'Honestly, I didn't know that. ... I'm going to warn my buddies about these websites.' ' If a potential buyer is unwilling to listen, and if Lembo has enough information, then he'll turn it over to police. In other cases, he can be successful in changing a buyer's mind by educating them about human trafficking. 'There's somebody there who still wants to listen to some reason, and probably the biggest thing we run into is educating these men into understanding that most of these women are being forced against their wills by pimps to have sex with them,' he said. Force, fraud or coercion At times, victims or people close to victims will call the National Human Trafficking Hotline, the top Google result for help. Victims from Cambria and Somerset counties have called the hotline and spoken to someone on the other end – such as Malika Said, a hotline supervisor – who will begin the conversation by asking whether the caller is in a safe place where they aren't being monitored by their trafficker. Said is then obligated to tell callers about the hotline's mandated reporting policies – the hotline must report acts of violence heard over the phone or discussions of minors being abused or neglected. And then Said gives them a basic summary of what trafficking is and asks the caller whether their situation aligns with that; trafficking situations involve force, fraud or coercion. 'And then we let the callers take it from there,' she said. 'And we assess their needs and provide whatever it is that they want.' Said may call a local shelter while on the phone with a caller and say: 'We have this person who's on the phone and they are looking for a safe place to stay tonight; can you help them?' 'We don't want the victims to be calling all these places on their own and just get rejected,' she said, 'especially if all the shelters are full, so we try to see if we can connect them to a place first, and if they are OK with that, then we connect them in a three-way call.' The hotline may also connect callers with case managers from local human service agencies, who can provide access to housing, food support, securing a job – any service that may eliminate the vulnerability that a trafficker is exploiting. 'A lot of times, people are recruited into the trafficking situations because they have certain vulnerabilities, whether it's economic or social vulnerabilities,' she said. 'Because of these vulnerabilities, they will get recruited into a situation where they are forced to do things they don't want to do, and because of all these limitations that the trafficker sets on them, they feel it's hard to get out of the situation.' If a victim relies on a trafficker for food or housing, for example, it's difficult for the victim to leave that situation on his or her own. 'There's a lot of times that we do get callers who are ready to leave, but find it very difficult so we talk them through the possibilities; we safety-plan with them, we give them the right resources,' according to Said. 'Not everyone is ready to report to police when they call the hotline, so we just talk through all the options that they have.' Both sex and labor Consolidating duplicate calls about the same case, the hotline identified a total of 12 likely victims across six trafficking situations in Cambria County from 2015 to 2022. 'Sometimes we have one situation/one victim call, but more often it's one situation/multiple victims,' National Human Trafficking Hotline spokeswoman Sabrina Thulander said. The hotline's data are not representative of all trafficking in Cambria County, only of the cases that are reported and identified by the hotline. The volume of calls can be affected by factors including awareness of trafficking as an issue and awareness of what help is available, Thulander said. The Cambria County cases were almost entirely situations and victims of sex trafficking, she said. More recent data are available, but it has not yet undergone the same level of validation as the data from previous years, she said. In Somerset County, the hotline identified three likely victims of trafficking from 2015 to 2022. In those cases, two of the three victims reported they were a victim of both sex and labor trafficking, Thulander said. 'I think with labor it tends to be more fraud, whereas, with sex trafficking, it's force or coercion,' she said. Labor trafficking can occur through a regular job posting, according to Said. 'They don't really outline what's happening and people are desperate for work, and they get sucked into it,' she said. 'There will be recruiters for some farming industries and so they will kind of recruit you into the trafficking situation, and it might be similar to a regular farming position, but you don't know the difference between the two. 'Sometimes it could also be for modeling; it can be a modeling job posting, but then you get recruited into it and all of a sudden you are in a sex trafficking situation.' 'Investigating ... cases' For Pennsylvania as a whole, from 2015 to 2022, the hotline identified a total of 2,566 likely victims and 1,487 individual situations of trafficking. Of those, 359 of the likely victims were victims of labor trafficking, and 1,933 were victims of sex trafficking. Some of the most commonly reported venues for labor trafficking were domestic work, restaurants and food service, and agriculture/farms/animal husbandry. Some of the most commonly reported venues for sex trafficking were illicit massage businesses, hotel/motel-based commercial sex, residence-based commercial sex, pornography, and internet-based commercial sex, Thulander said. Cambria County District Attorney Greg Neugebauer said human trafficking investigations are underway locally with help from people who make reports. 'We've had tips from doctors, school personnel, religious folks,' he said. 'And sometimes someone just sees something that just doesn't look right, and they call police. We've had a number of cases that have been prosecuted and, frankly, we are actively investigating several cases right now.' One case locally came about because a search warrant was executed on a completely unrelated matter, he said, 'and we discovered some things that were troubling.' In another instance, he said, a trafficker ended up going to jail for an unrelated crime, and authorities subsequently discovered that a person had been sex-trafficked. 'We've seen it locally,' he said. 'I think it exists everywhere, and I think the statistics are accurate that it goes unreported. A lot of it.'
Business Upturn
30-05-2025
- Business Upturn
Nationwide Coalition Unites in 'Operation Coast to Coast' to Combat Human Trafficking
By GlobeNewswire Published on May 30, 2025, 21:54 IST Des Moines, Iowa, May 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Operation 'Coast to Coast', a coalition of over 150 law enforcement agencies and organizations including the Human Trafficking Training Center , Safe House Project , Our Rescue , the Rotary Action Group Against Slavery , Street Grace , Flock Safety , Delta Air Lines , and Code Four , is proud to announce a multi-state trafficking operation that recovered 70 individuals being trafficked, thus far. The 24-hour operation occurred across 19 states on May 29th and also resulted in 46 human trafficking suspects being arrested. More data on the operation is expected to be released over the upcoming days. Operation Coast to Coast began in 2024 as an initiative of the Human Trafficking Training Center and other organizations to spur a nationwide response to trafficking. 'Conducting proactive human trafficking operations can be positive and help identify victims and arrest traffickers. This group of states and agencies from across America have come together during Operation Coast to Coast, obtained proper training and participated in this nationwide operation to help victims, arrest traffickers and make their communities safer,' said Dan Nash, founder of the Human Trafficking Training Center and a former human trafficking investigator. 'As more and more agencies obtain proper training, this number will grow and make trafficking inhospitable in America.' This year, the focus of Operation Coast to Coast was Illegal Massage Businesses (IMBs) , a subset of the human trafficking industry that use the cover of a legitimate business to conduct trafficking, often tied to transnational crime. There are an estimated 7,500-9,000 IMBs in the U.S., creating a network that Street Grace estimates is the country's second-largest pipeline for human trafficking. During the Operation, law enforcement identified and entered at least 26 IMBs in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, New York, Nebraska and Vermont. The Operation also resulted in the recovery of at least $700,000 in the following days, the organizations involved in Operation Coast to Coast will provide the recovered victims with much-needed services, including food, lodging, medical services, drug rehabilitation, counseling/therapy and childcare. 'The critical window immediately following a trafficking victim's escape determines their future — without immediate access to safe, trauma-informed care, 80% of survivors face re-exploitation,' said Kristi Wells, CEO and Co-Founder of Safe House Project. 'Safe House Project is honored to partner with law enforcement in Operation Coast to Coast, offering immediate support and safe home placement for every individual identified during these operations. When law enforcement intervention is coupled with comprehensive trauma-informed support, we create a pathway to genuine freedom. This collaborative approach ensures that survivors receive the hope, healing, and future they deserve, while holding traffickers and buyers accountable for their crimes.' Several of the law enforcement agencies involved in the Operation used the TraffickStop public safety data platform, a joint initiative of Code Four and Flock Safety. TraffickStop, which utilizes Flock Safety's Nova platform , allows investigators to aggregate, visualize, and analyze data on suspected human trafficking groups and suspects, accelerating complex cases. 'Flock Safety's mission is centered around helping communities become safer together, and Operation Coast to Coast embodies the spirit of this work,' said Garrett Langley, Co-Founder and CEO of Flock Safety. 'Earlier this year we crossed the milestone of helping recover over 1,000 missing persons around the country, and we are incredibly proud that our technology played a role in Operation Coast to Coast to help investigate some of the most heinous trafficking cases. We look forward to seeing our technology continue to play a role in critical public safety operations like this.' 'TraffickStop, in collaboration with Flock Safety, is proud to provide investigators with the actionable intelligence they need to strengthen cases and hold traffickers accountable,' said Andrew Romero, Founder of Code Four Development. 'As a retired organized crime detective, I've seen how real-time intelligence accelerates enforcement actions to dismantle criminal networks. We remain committed to equipping those on the front lines with the insights to move swiftly — and compassionately — against this crime.'Human trafficking continues to be an issue across America. If you suspect human trafficking in your area, please call 911 or your state human trafficking hotline.'We've seen that when victims escape human trafficking situations — also known as modern slavery — it is absolutely critical that they receive care right away,' said Dave McCleary, Global Chair of the Rotary Action Group Against Slavery (Rotary International). 'This group of stakeholders from the public and private sector has come together to ensure that wherever these victims are, we are able to help them begin the healing journey toward a new life.''Human trafficking is a problem that cannot be solved alone. Our Rescue is honored to stand shoulder to shoulder with law enforcement, nonprofits, and private industry — because only together can we end human trafficking,' said Nate Davis, VP of Mission, North America, Our Rescue. For more information on Operation 'Coast to Coast' please contact Dan Nash: [email protected]. For more information on the TraffickStop platform, please contact Andrew Romero: [email protected]. Disclaimer: The above press release comes to you under an arrangement with GlobeNewswire. Business Upturn takes no editorial responsibility for the same. GlobeNewswire provides press release distribution services globally, with substantial operations in North America and Europe.
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Nationwide Coalition Unites in 'Operation Coast to Coast' to Combat Human Trafficking
Joint effort by law enforcement, non-profits, and corporations leads to recovery of 70 victims and 46 arrests across 19 states, with a focus on illegal massage businesses. Des Moines, Iowa, May 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Operation 'Coast to Coast', a coalition of over 150 law enforcement agencies and organizations including the Human Trafficking Training Center, Safe House Project, Our Rescue, the Rotary Action Group Against Slavery, Street Grace, Flock Safety, Delta Air Lines, and Code Four, is proud to announce a multi-state trafficking operation that recovered 70 individuals being trafficked, thus far. The 24-hour operation occurred across 19 states on May 29th and also resulted in 46 human trafficking suspects being arrested. More data on the operation is expected to be released over the upcoming days. Operation Coast to Coast began in 2024 as an initiative of the Human Trafficking Training Center and other organizations to spur a nationwide response to trafficking. 'Conducting proactive human trafficking operations can be positive and help identify victims and arrest traffickers. This group of states and agencies from across America have come together during Operation Coast to Coast, obtained proper training and participated in this nationwide operation to help victims, arrest traffickers and make their communities safer,' said Dan Nash, founder of the Human Trafficking Training Center and a former human trafficking investigator. 'As more and more agencies obtain proper training, this number will grow and make trafficking inhospitable in America.' This year, the focus of Operation Coast to Coast was Illegal Massage Businesses (IMBs), a subset of the human trafficking industry that use the cover of a legitimate business to conduct trafficking, often tied to transnational crime. There are an estimated 7,500-9,000 IMBs in the U.S., creating a network that Street Grace estimates is the country's second-largest pipeline for human the Operation, law enforcement identified and entered at least 26 IMBs in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, New York, Nebraska and Vermont. The Operation also resulted in the recovery of at least $700,000 in the following days, the organizations involved in Operation Coast to Coast will provide the recovered victims with much-needed services, including food, lodging, medical services, drug rehabilitation, counseling/therapy and childcare. "The critical window immediately following a trafficking victim's escape determines their future — without immediate access to safe, trauma-informed care, 80% of survivors face re-exploitation," said Kristi Wells, CEO and Co-Founder of Safe House Project. "Safe House Project is honored to partner with law enforcement in Operation Coast to Coast, offering immediate support and safe home placement for every individual identified during these operations. When law enforcement intervention is coupled with comprehensive trauma-informed support, we create a pathway to genuine freedom. This collaborative approach ensures that survivors receive the hope, healing, and future they deserve, while holding traffickers and buyers accountable for their crimes."Several of the law enforcement agencies involved in the Operation used the TraffickStop public safety data platform, a joint initiative of Code Four and Flock Safety. TraffickStop, which utilizes Flock Safety's Nova platform, allows investigators to aggregate, visualize, and analyze data on suspected human trafficking groups and suspects, accelerating complex cases.'Flock Safety's mission is centered around helping communities become safer together, and Operation Coast to Coast embodies the spirit of this work,' said Garrett Langley, Co-Founder and CEO of Flock Safety. 'Earlier this year we crossed the milestone of helping recover over 1,000 missing persons around the country, and we are incredibly proud that our technology played a role in Operation Coast to Coast to help investigate some of the most heinous trafficking cases. We look forward to seeing our technology continue to play a role in critical public safety operations like this.' 'TraffickStop, in collaboration with Flock Safety, is proud to provide investigators with the actionable intelligence they need to strengthen cases and hold traffickers accountable,' said Andrew Romero, Founder of Code Four Development. 'As a retired organized crime detective, I've seen how real-time intelligence accelerates enforcement actions to dismantle criminal networks. We remain committed to equipping those on the front lines with the insights to move swiftly — and compassionately — against this crime.'Human trafficking continues to be an issue across America. If you suspect human trafficking in your area, please call 911 or your state human trafficking hotline.'We've seen that when victims escape human trafficking situations — also known as modern slavery — it is absolutely critical that they receive care right away,' said Dave McCleary, Global Chair of the Rotary Action Group Against Slavery (Rotary International). 'This group of stakeholders from the public and private sector has come together to ensure that wherever these victims are, we are able to help them begin the healing journey toward a new life.'"Human trafficking is a problem that cannot be solved alone. Our Rescue is honored to stand shoulder to shoulder with law enforcement, nonprofits, and private industry — because only together can we end human trafficking,' said Nate Davis, VP of Mission, North America, Our more information on Operation 'Coast to Coast' please contact Dan Nash: dan@ For more information on the TraffickStop platform, please contact Andrew Romero: andrew@ CONTACT: Holly Beilin Flock Safety +1 (404) 476-6599 holly@ in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
