EL Dorado County

– The EDSO HTCU is a well-resourced unit that assists in a wide-variety of criminal investigations and coordinates with several regional and federal agencies on high- tech crimes. The small staff have the required industry expertise in IT and forensics technology, coupled with a law enforcement background to ensure the County has the skills and tools required to support the growing number of investigations and case requirements. INVESTIGATING CRIMES AGAINST CHILDREN HTCU is part of a nationwide integrated program, the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force. ICAC consists of 61 coordinated local task forces representing over 5,400 federal, state, and law enforcement agencies dedicated to investigating, prosecuting, and developing effective responses to online child exploitation. ICAC training providers are essential in providing the federal, state, and local agencies that make up the ICAC Task Force Program the tools and techniques necessary to develop an effective response to technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and internet crimes against children. The ICAC Program was developed in response to the increasing number of children and teenagers using the Internet and other technology, the proliferation of child sexual abuse images available electronically, and the heightened online activity by predators seeking unsupervised contact with potential underage victims. The ICAC Task Force agencies are engaged in both proactive and reactive investigations, forensic examinations, and criminal prosecutions. By helping state and local agencies develop effective, sustainable responses to online child victimization, including responses to child sexual abuse images, the ICAC Program has increased law enforcement's capacity to combat technology-facilitated crimes against children at every level. EDSO is an active member of the Sacramento Valley ICAC Task Force. Overall, EDSO has five detectives dedicated to investigating sex crimes including those involving children, including the two detectives in HTCU that take the lead in ICAC case referrals. From June 2023, until November 2024 (17 months), ICAC referred 222 cases to EDSO and HTCU. Of those, 88 were closed or referred to other agencies and 134 are currently under investigation. Those 222 cases were given a standard prioritization, based on urgency and imminent danger to a child. Twenty of the cases involved a child in danger, with two of them in imminent or ongoing danger. The remaining 202 cases involved child sexual abuse material (CSAM). ICAC referrals are initially generated by online service providers and social media communities where offending material is shared or stored. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) is also a referral source to ICAC and may come across child exploitation material in the absence of a designated online service provider. Roughly half of the ICAC referrals come from either Synchronoss or Discord. Synchronoss is a very large cloud provider used by telecom organizations and other communication and service providers to build personalized cloud environments that are in turn used by individuals. It provides enough flexibility and privacy of content that makes it an ideal platform to host, share, and sell illicit content. Unlike the Dark Web, Synchronoss makes every attempt to police its platform, identify this illicit content, and refer it to ICAC and local law enforcement agencies. Discord is an instant messaging, content sharing and community building platform primarily used by gamers, but has many other communities of interest, including apparently child exploitation activities. Other messaging and community building platforms, such as Reddit, Snapchat, and Google account for less than 10% of ICAC referrals each. Figure – Outcome of successful case arrest initiated through ICAC and processed by HTCU. Photo courtesy of EDSO. The referral process starts when one of these messaging platforms identifies CSAM and flags it for review. NCMEC receives a report on the material who may perform an initial investigation, including background checks on users and other available open-source information. An attempt is made to localize the illicit user and refer it to the appropriate regional ICAC task force. The regional task force will likely do additional research before involving the local law enforcement agency, in our case EDSO and HTCU. HTCU conducts its investigation further collecting information on the location of the user, including computer IP address and the illicit nature of the content. Once the address of the potential offender is confirmed, law enforcement must request a warrant from a judge after establishing probable cause for the search. Then a court order can be issued authorizing a search of the target residence and all electronic devices found within. A team of EDSO deputies and detectives will conduct the search, conduct interviews, and initiate appropriate legal action. The Grand Jury learned that HTCU is an “Affiliate Member” of the Sacramento ICAC Task Force, but not “Full Members.” As Affiliates, HTCU has a strong relationship with the team and can request resources (bodies) for their own investigations as needed or voluntarily participate in their investigations when possible. The requirement is that full members contribute a minimum of two days per week directly to the Task Force to work cases potentially out of their local jurisdiction. In return, full members receive direct benefit from ICAC grants and funding opportunities (paid training and equipment for their own office) as well as direct access to all equipment and tools available in the Sacramento office. At present, HTCU does not have the staff resources to contribute two days per week to ICAC activities, although they could benefit from the additional funding and resources available to full members. At present, ICAC refers approximately 200 cases per year to HTCU. HTCU has a backlog of 250 cases pending review or action, more than a year’s worth. They close out about 100 ICAC tips a year, with about half of those resulting in an arrest or field case. If HTCU could investigate the current backlog of ICAC tips, at the corresponding rate of arrests or field cases, EDSO could take approximately 100 more child predators or conveyers and consumers of CSAM off the streets that are otherwise going to remain at large. Both detectives in HTCU also have skills in other areas that reduce their ability to focus exclusively on high-tech and ICAC investigations. One detective is a member of the Explosive Ordinance Division (EOD) bomb squad, including being trained and able to respond to any chemical, biological or radioactive attacks within the County. The second detective is a skilled drone pilot and also serves on the Unmanned Arial Systems (UAS) team in EDSO. It’s great that EDSO can leverage broad technical skills in multiple areas, and that we have so much expertise within the County without hiring specialized talent, but it does mean that we are slower to work through the ICAC backlog. Even if you can legitimately say that an impending chemical or radiological terrorist attack, for example, should take precedence above an ICAC lead, each of these workloads requires additional annual training, education, and coordination with state and federal agencies on an ongoing basis in the absence of an active incident that take time. The Grand Jury did not learn what percentage of time the detectives split between their secondary units on an annual basis. There are no plans to increase the number of detectives in HTCU in the foreseeable future despite the ICAC backlog and the need to prioritize investigations. The Grand Jury cannot speculate on overall staffing priorities across all EDSO, and we assume the staffing resources in HTCU are appropriate. There is, however, more work that can be done, and there are important leads to CSAM investigations that are not being addressed.

– Current staffing levels in HTCU do not allow EDSO to be a “full” member of ICAC, limiting the County’s ability to receive additional grants and leverage ICAC resources. HTCU also has a significant backlog of leads from ICAC that could lead to as many as 100 consumers of CSAM or other crimes against children. While two detectives are currently assigned to HTCU, their commitment to other units means they are less than full time on HTCU investigations. The Grand Jury is aware that the rare skills of the HTCU detectives are in high demand in industry where salaries are considerably higher than EDC. The County is fortunate that HTCU staff appear satisfied and are fully committed to their work of focusing on the growing problems of child abuse and trafficking. They would be very difficult to replace and a loss of even one person would be devastating to EDSO efforts in this area. The HTCU crime lab and available desk space have been designed for future expansion and the possibility of adding one or two more detectives. Evidence storage was recently migrated to the EDSO data center from the lab to make more space available and to reduce equipment noise. A CHILD RECOVERY AND TREATMENT EFFORT IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA While not specifically addressed to EDSO or County activity, to complete the picture of the scope of child abuse activity and the need for attention in this area, the Grand Jury learned about a project in Live Oak, California (Sutter County) called Peace of Heaven. The Church of Glad Tidings in nearby Yuba City was approached in early 2024 by a task force that asked for help in finding safe housing for over 800(!) trafficked children that had been recently rescued in the Bay Area. The church had no solution but have since embarked on acquiring a ten-acre property that was once a low-security woman’s prison and is converting it into a healing center for rescued and traumatized youth. They are partnering with Mission Safe Harbour, the most aggressive child rescue operation in the world, on the conversion of the facility and future treatment programs. The County should be aware of child rescue programs like this and continue to coordinate efforts with regional organizations to end this scourge of child exploitation and trafficking. FINDINGS Findings