Child sex exploitation and Abuse (CSEA) is an unsettling and challenging topic, as well as a growing global issue that impacts all our communities. The following content is intended to educate readers, provide tools to take action, and protect the most vulnerable among us through awareness and action.
What CSEA Really Looks Like Today
Child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA), as defined by the Department of Homeland Security, includes a broad range of criminal acts that involve victimizing a minor for sexual gratification or some other personal or financial gain. This abuse takes many forms, but often starts with grooming. Grooming establishes the trust and vulnerability that offenders exploit, sextortion sustains control through coercion, and together these acts drive the creation and distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), perpetuating cycles of harm.
Like many crimes, CSEA is changing with the rise of an increasingly digital society. Mobile access, gaming, streaming, and growing internet coverage worldwide give offenders easy reach, rapid circulation of material, and, most alarmingly, anonymity.
Tragically, the issue is rapidly growing. The 2023 CyberTipline report from The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported an alarming 36.2 million reports of CSEA and more than 104 million files of suspected CSAM in the US alone. This represents an increase of nearly 35 million suspected CSAM files from pre-pandemic (2019) levels.
The rising epidemic, however, is worldwide. A report from Childlight, hosted by the University of Edinburgh and funded by the Human Dignity Foundation, showed 12.6% of children globally, or 1 in 8, have been victims of non-consensual taking, sharing, or exposure to sexual images and video in the past year.
Every one of these videos or images represents harm to a child, and those having a transaction associated with them have passed through a financial system facilitating payments. When money changes hands, the economic system itself becomes a conduit for exploitation.
In fact, according to an April 2025 report from Childlight, by Professor Deborah Fry, child sexual exploitation and abuse is a multi-billion dollar industry with profits being pocketed by entities ranging from payment platforms to organized criminals.
The complex and digital nature of this predicate offense makes the associated money laundering difficult to detect. Individuals and criminal organizations conceal the profits generated from production, distribution, and access-for-profit schemes through cryptocurrency, prepaid or gift cards, and digital wallets, often established using fake or stolen identities. All vehicles for anonymity.
Revenue is frequently broken into smaller, less conspicuous amounts—a tactic known as ‘smurfing’—and then layered through networks of multiple accounts, often across jurisdictions, using front companies or by coercing vulnerable individuals into opening accounts for this purpose.
Funds are reintegrated into the financial system, leveraging weaknesses in legitimate online marketplaces. Online marketplace exploitation can include hijacked accounts, fake listings, inflated pricing, blending illicit sales with everyday commerce, or manipulating returns/refunds.
Red flags may include one or a combination of the following factors:
- Use of identity theft or synthetic identities to create “clean” financial profiles
- Payments, transactions, or ATM activity happening late at night or early in the morning (may indicate extortion happening in real time or a consumer in a different time zone).
- Rapid movement of funds
- Transactions involving high-risk jurisdictions
- Inconsistent customer profiles (e.g., low-income individuals receiving large transfers)
- Use of anonymizing services (VPNs, proxy IPs)
- Charitable or crowdfunding platforms that mask illicit donations as charitable giving
- Donations sent via crypto wallets to influencers or advocacy platforms concealing CSAM
- Payments for premium features on regular social media platforms, or subscription to specialty creator-content streaming websites.
- Patterns of P2P payments and/or cryptocurrency transfers.
- Payments to webcam/live-streaming platforms or other sites specific to adult entertainment content.
From Awareness to Action: What Families, Communities, and Banks Can Do
In our homes, communities, and financial systems, transparency is the cornerstone of keeping children safe. With our children, consistent and honest communication builds trust and helps identify early warning signs. When we teach children about boundaries, consent, online safety, and emotional intelligence, we are arming them to protect themselves and normalizing the topics for open discussion.
This, combined with an in-depth understanding of children’s digital access and use, can be the crucial difference in lowering these alarming trends. Parental oversight considerations should include:
- Knowing what devices your child has access to
- Knowing your children’s passcodes to their phones or tablets
- Implementing parental controls and monitoring their use of gaming applications or social media accounts
- Reviewing your child’s direct messages (DMs) and private chat messages
- Understanding the risks for exposure and dangers associated with the use of apps, social media accounts, and gaming sites
- Consistently checking your child’s device(s)
- Turn off location sharing in your child’s app or device
- Consider turning the internet off at night – this is often when predators will seek to communicate
How Technology Can Turn the Tide
Technology is neither inherently good nor bad; it is how we choose to use it that defines its impact. While internet access and digital platforms have created new risks, they also provide immense opportunities: enriching children’s lives through education, connection, and discovery when guided responsibly.
Technology can also play an essential role in helping financial institutions and payment system providers ensure they aren’t unwittingly supporting transactions associated with child sex exploitation activity, including grooming or live distance abuse, which is often a precursor to child sex tourism. Advanced customer due diligence and transaction monitoring systems, enriched with holistic external data, can provide vital tools to law enforcement in addressing this issue.
In a recent proof-of-concept with the Child Rescue Coalition, a Tier 1 financial institution successfully collated data on known CSAM-related activity with internal bank data to identify the actors behind previously tier one financial institution was able to collate data with known CSAM-related activity to internal bank data in order to unmask the actors behind what had previously been anonymous activity. Results from this pilot provided law enforcement with specific and actionable intelligence, including the discovery of a middle school teacher with CSAM and a suspected CSAM-related criminal network in Charlotte, NC.
This is where Quantifind’s work comes in. Our AI-powered risk intelligence platform is purpose-built to accurately detect hidden financial patterns for exploitation at speed and scale. By enriching customer due diligence and transaction monitoring with holistic external data, Quantifind enables financial institutions and governments to generate the kind of actionable intelligence that can disrupt exploitation with accuracy, speed, and scale.
The fight against CSEA cannot be won in silos. Financial data, law enforcement expertise, and technology must converge. Quantifind stands ready to be part of that convergence so that every child can live in a safer world. Join us at our upcoming “Combatting CSEA with Force” convergence event on Oct 1, 2025 at the Wells Fargo offices in Charlotte.
This is the power of applying technology responsibly: putting a name to the offenders hiding behind obfuscated online systems can reveal not only the perpetrators, but also their networks. This allows investigators and law enforcement to expand their lens to capture and prosecute more bad actors. Quantifind can provide state-of-the-art network graphing, based on vast structured and unstructured data, that can help investigations move seamlessly across people and organizations, with contextual summaries and relationship evidence along the way.
Resources:
https://childrescuecoalition.org/education/