Cartels now use video game platforms like GTA to traffic and recruit

Investigators from anti-drug services around the world will soon have to develop new capabilities: drug platforms video game online are increasingly used by traffickers and cartels to sell drugs or recruit henchmen.

To raise awareness about this problem, the International Cooperation Group of the Council of Europe on Drugs and Addictions (Pompidou Group), which brings together 41 countries, will hold a forum on December 19 and 20 in Mexico with local authorities, who are at the cutting edge on this topic.

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Drug traffickers no longer only have weapons of all kinds: “they feel very comfortable with new technologies, like the famous Sinaloa cartel, whose Twitter account has more than 100,000 followers” ​​(the account was suspended on the social network formerly Twitter), explained Benjamin Shultz, criminal foreign influence analyst at Deloitte, in a presentation to the Council of Europe.

The cartels’ field of action to sell drugs or recruit personnel has been modernized and expanded, and online games such as “Grand Theft Auto” or “World of Warcraft” are ideal places to operate with complete peace of mind.

According to Shultz, about 60% of online players are under 35 years old and a majority are young men, the favorite target of traffickers.

Conversation with emojis

“The ‘dark web’ has lost popularity among cartels because authorities have become effective in policing there. But video games are a very important field of resources and are almost not monitored,” said Shultz.

“In online games, my character can enter into a relationship with any other player, teenagers can also argue with complete strangers and there are no major controls,” added the cybersecurity specialist.

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In fact, The internal messages of these online games are extremely difficult to monitor, especially when traffickers contact young players using emoticons..

In the United States, for example, the power outlet emoji means “distributor.” The small palm tree with an innocent air is “marijuana”, the key is “cocaine”.

You can improvise an entire conversation with just those little icons without using any suspicious words in the chats.

The Mexican police were the first to detect this type of practice and reported the case of three adolescents aged 11 to 14 initially contacted by traffickers in the game “Garena Free Fire.”

They were offered $200 a week to serve as lookouts in northern Mexico and the person who contacted them bought them bus tickets.

The recruiter assured the three young men that they were going to love the job he proposed “because you like guns (like in the violent video game you play) and you will be able to earn a lot of money.” The trio was intercepted before boarding the bus.

“It is not an isolated phenomenon”

“That type of transaction or action is more developed on Instagram or Snapchat, but numerous cases of recruitment through online games have been observed near the border between Mexico and the United States,” Shultz said.

“It is a global problem and the idea is to have a forum where we can raise awareness among governments and authorities about the phenomenon,” explained Thomas Kattau, deputy director of the Pompidou Group, regarding the conference in Mexico.

“The authorities in Mexico were the first to detect this phenomenon and we began to see people trapped in this way in the United Kingdom. It is not an anecdotal or isolated phenomenon, it is expanding rapidly, it worries many countries,” he noted.

To curb this type of practice, Shultz and Kattau advocate improving information about online risks for young players and their parents, and strengthening controls by online gaming creators and platforms, especially to improve surveillance programs used by artificial intelligence.

Source: Elcomercio

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