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November 8, 2011Washington, DC, United StatesChild Exploitation

TOP STORY: Industry partners play a crucial role in investigations

Industry partners play a crucial role in investigations
Law enforcement agencies across the globe work tirelessly to end child exploitation, but they can't do it alone. They rely on assistance from private sector companies to successfully accomplish their mission.

"ICE Homeland Security Investigations is involved in a multitude of investigations," said Matthew Dunn, child exploitation section chief at the agency's Cyber Crimes Center. "Partnering with industry leaders not only extends our reach, but also our effectiveness as a law enforcement agency."

Just this week, PayPal joined U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as a member of the Virtual Global Taskforce. The taskforce is an alliance of international law enforcement agencies and private sector partners who are committed to ending online child abuse. PayPal employs multiple sophisticated models to detect and remove accounts involved in the distribution of child pornography.

"PayPal takes its role as a leader in online payments seriously. We are dedicated to providing a safe and secure payments infrastructure to our millions of customers and merchant partners across the world whilst actively working with global law enforcement agencies to combat illegal activity," said Andrew Rechtman, director of strategy for PayPal Australia.

The company has policies and procedures in place to combat online child exploitation and has a long standing history of active cooperation with international law enforcement whenever illegal activity is detected or suspected. From 2006 to 2009, during Operation Flicker, PayPal helped law enforcement dismantle a criminal organization by identifying thousands of individuals who subscribed to child pornography websites.

Learn more about ICE's efforts to end child exploitation.

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