Category: MIL-OSI

The FBI conducted a first-of-its-kind global operation to address the dangerous rise in American suicides attributed to this crime.

Today, the FBI is announcing a global operation to combat financially motivated sextortion schemes operating out of Nigeria. In coordination with multiple law enforcement partners, the FBI conducted Operation Artemis—a surge of resources and personnel to Nigeria to address the high rate of sextortion related suicides attributed to Nigerian perpetrators. As a result of Operation Artemis, FBI investigations led to the arrests of 22 Nigerian subjects connected to financially motivated sextortion schemes. Of those 22 subjects, approximately half were directly linked to victims who took their own lives. This operation marks a significant step in the fight against child exploitation and brings justice and accountability to international perpetrators hiding anonymously behind screens.

“Operation Artemis exemplifies the FBI’s never-ending mission to protect our most vulnerable, and to pursue the heinous criminals harming our children — no matter where they hide,” said FBI Director Kash Patel. “This operation highlights the critical need for international cooperation to address this growing threat, and it’s a fight we can’t take on without our valued partners across the globe. We hope this message encourages parents and guardians to continue to educate their children about online safety and serves as a reminder of the FBI’s relentless pursuit of keeping our children safe.”

This announcement comes as the FBI has observed a 30% increase in sextortion-related tips received to our National Threat Operations Center from October 2024 to March 2025 as compared to the previous year. According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center or IC3, there were over 54,000 victims in 2024, up from 34,000 in 2023. Over the last two years there have been nearly $65 million dollars in financial losses due to this crime. This comes as the FBI began observing a significant increase over the last three years in financially motivated sextortion schemes targeting young males ages 14-17, resulting in more than 20 minor victims dying by suicide.

Given the alarming rise and similarities of these cases, the FBI opened investigations across the country with the goal of bringing answers and closure to grieving American families. Information gathered by the FBI’s Child Exploitation Operational Unit (CEOU) allowed the FBI to work collaboratively with all 55 of our field offices to identify nearly 3,000 victims of financially motivated sextortion. It was during these investigative steps that the commonality of perpetrators residing in Nigeria began to grow and paint a larger, more international scope of this crime.

As a result of Operation Artemis, a Nigerian man was extradited to the U.S. in January and charged with causing the death of a South Carolina teenager who took his own life after being extorted by the suspect posing as a woman. Additionally, two men were extradited from Nigeria to the United States last year to face charges related to the sextortion and death of a young man in Pennsylvania. These subjects will now be held accountable in the American justice system, with more subjects still awaiting extraditions in Nigeria.

The subjects arrested in this operation engaged in sophisticated, financially motivated sextortion schemes by contacting victims via social media platforms and posing as peers or potential romantic interests. Once trust or rapport was established, often through conversation in chatrooms or direct messages, the suspects coerced their victims into taking and sharing compromising images of themselves. Offenders then threatened to release the compromising photos unless they received immediate payment — typically requested via gift cards, mobile payment services, wire transfers, or cryptocurrency. Regardless of a payment being received or not, the perpetrators would often continue to manipulate their victims, leaving them feeling ashamed, isolated, and responsible.

Operation Artemis was spearheaded by multiple units at the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, including CEOU and the Crimes and Crimes Against Children Human Trafficking Intelligence Unit, and across the globe at the FBI Legal Attaché offices in Abuja and Lagos. The FBI’s Victim Outreach Support and Strategy Program of the Victim Services Division also played a key role assisting victims’ families throughout these various investigations. The following FBI field offices also provided resources directly on the ground in Nigeria as well as invaluable investigative support and assistance: FBI Atlanta, Charlotte, Columbia, Houston, Jackson, Milwaukee, Nashville, Newark, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Richmond, San Diego, and St. Louis. Additionally, our partners at the Department of Justice Child Exploitation Obscenities Section served a critical role in ensuring the perpetrators in these cases face charges. Working together, we were able to obtain arrests, gather comprehensive forensic analyses, and conduct subject interviews on the ground in Nigeria.

This operation would not have been possible without our partnerships with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), and their assistance in developing an ongoing, collaborative strategy to combat financially motivated sextortion. Multiple agencies also provided the FBI with assistance both with personnel and intelligence for this operation, leading to an even larger global perspective on the threat. FBI’s CEOU secured personnel assistance from our Five Eyes partners, including Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Australian Federal Police (AFP). The FBI also recognizes the valued partnership and assistance of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

The FBI encourages parents to have ongoing conversations with their children and teenagers about online safety and to remind them they are not alone, and it is not their fault should they become a victim to these sophisticated and egregious schemes. If your child believes they are a victim of sextortion or financially motivated sextortion, please immediately report the activity to law enforcement and the FBI by calling 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324) or tips.fbi.gov. For immediate help or if you or a child is in danger, call 911. For 24/7 free, confidential mental health assistance, the 988 suicide and crisis hotline connects individuals in need of support with counselors across the United States.

Take It Down is NCMEC’s free service that can help you remove or stop the online sharing of nude, partially nude, or sexually explicit images or videos taken of you when you were under 18 years old. You can remain anonymous while using the service and you won’t have to send your images or videos to anyone. Take It Down will work on public or unencrypted online platforms that have agreed to participate. Please visit takeitdown.ncmec.org.

For more information on sextortion and financial sextortion, please visit the FBI’s resources on the threats at fbi.gov/sextortion and fbi.gov/financialsextortion.

An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Today, in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, Michael McMahon, 57, of Mahwah, New Jersey, was sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay an $11,000 fine for acting as an illegal agent of the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and interstate stalking and conspiracy to commit the same, for his participation in a scheme to coerce repatriation of a U.S. resident to the PRC as part of its international repatriation effort known as “Operation Fox Hunt.” McMahon and co-defendants Zhu Yong, 68, of East Elmhurst, New York, and Congying Zheng, 29, of Brooklyn, were convicted by a federal jury in June 2023 following a three-week trial. In January 2025, Zhu and Zheng were sentenced respectively to 24 months and 16 months in prison.

As proven at trial, between approximately 2016 and 2019, the defendants and their co-conspirators participated in an international campaign to threaten, harass, surveil, and intimidate John Doe #1 and his family in order to force him and his wife, Jane Doe #1, to return to the PRC to face purported corruption charges. Beginning in 2012, John Doe #1 and Jane Doe #1 had been targeted for repatriation as part of the PRC’s transnational repression programs known as “Operation Fox Hunt” and “Operation Sky Net.” John Doe #1 and his family had accordingly sought to keep their address out of public records.

Zhu hired McMahon, a retired NYPD sergeant working as a private investigator, to locate John Doe #1. McMahon obtained sensitive information about John Doe #1, which he then reported back to Zhu and others, including a PRC police officer. McMahon also conducted surveillance outside the New Jersey home of John Doe #1’s relative and provided Zhu and PRC officials with detailed reports of what he observed. The operation was supervised and directed by several PRC officials, including a PRC police officer and a PRC prosecutor.

As McMahon knew, the operation was intended not only to locate John Doe #1, but to coerce him to return to the PRC by exerting pressure on his family members. In April 2017, PRC officials threatened to jail John Doe #1’s sister, who lived in the PRC, in order to coerce John Doe #1’s then-82-year-old father to travel from the PRC to their relative’s home in New Jersey. John Doe #1’s father, who had recently suffered a brain hemorrhage, was so frail that a doctor accompanied him for the trip. McMahon followed John Doe #1’s father from the relative’s New Jersey home, and, by doing so, was able to learn John Doe #1’s address. McMahon immediately provided this information to a PRC operative.

On Sept. 4, 2018, Zheng and another co-conspirator drove to the New Jersey residence of John Doe #1 and Jane Doe #1 – at the address that McMahon had provided – where they pounded on the front door, attempted to enter the house, and then peered through the windows in the back of the home. They left a note on the front door informing John Doe #1 that his “wife and children will be okay” if John Doe #1 surrendered himself to face a ten-year prison term in the PRC.

McMahon knew that the subjects of his investigation were wanted by the PRC government, a fact that he texted about with another investigator he contracted to help him. Following his arrest, McMahon acknowledged knowing that his employers wanted to get the victim back to China “so they could prosecute him.” After providing the victims’ address, McMahon told his surveillance partner that he was “waiting for a call” to find out what to do next. McMahon’s partner responded, “Yeah. From NJ State Police about an abduction,” to which McMahon responded “Lol.”  McMahon later suggested to a PRC co-conspirator that they “harass” John Doe #1 by “[p]ark[ing] outside his home and let[ting] him know we are there.” McMahon took other investigative steps designed to harass the victims, such as researching their daughter’s university residence and college major. McMahon was paid more than $19,000 in total for his role in the illegal repatriation scheme. In an apparent attempt to conceal the source, McMahon deposited payments from his PRC clients into his son’s bank account, the only time he had done so with client payments.

Previously, three co-defendants pleaded guilty in connection with their roles in the PRC-directed harassment and intimidation campaign. They are awaiting sentencing.

Sue J. Bai, head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, U.S. Attorney John J. Durham for the Eastern District of New York, and Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division made the announcement.

The FBI New York Field Office investigated the case, with valuable assistance provided by the Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Meredith A. Arfa and Irisa Chen for the Eastern District of New York and Trial Attorney Christine A. Bonomo of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section are prosecuting the case. Paralegal Specialist Rebecca Roth for the Eastern District of New York provided valuable assistance.

The FBI has created a website for victims to report efforts by foreign governments to stalk, intimidate, or assault people in the United States. If you believe that you are or have been a victim of transnational repression, please visit the FBI’s website.

Good morning, Chairman Moran, Ranking Member Van Hollen, and members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for inviting me to appear before you today. Each day, the men and women of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are making a real difference in communities across the nation, tackling some of the most complex national security and criminal threats with perseverance, professionalism, and integrity—sometimes at the greatest of costs. On their behalf, I ask for your support and pledge to be the best possible stewards of the resources you provide.

The FBI’s work to combat violent crime, gangs, cartels, fentanyl, terrorism, and a myriad of other threats has never been more important. The FBI is meeting these threats head on by redirecting and prioritizing resources to ensure every dollar spent is supporting our employer, the American people.

The fiscal year (FY) 2026 budget request proposes a total of $10.1 billion in salaries and expenses funding to carry out the FBI’s national security, intelligence, criminal law enforcement, and criminal justice services missions.

Keeping Americans safe at home and abroad is a no-fail mission. The FBI currently has over 35,000 direct-funded positions. The dedicated men and women in those positions are tackling a myriad threats head on, from a surge in terrorism threats in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, attack in Israel; to a scourge of fentanyl killing Americans from coast to coast; to an explosion of violent crime plaguing our communities. The FBI’s FY2026 budget request directly supports our coordination and partnership with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial partners.

Beginning on January 20, 2025, President Trump issued several homeland and national security Executive Orders, to include directing federal government agencies to pursue the total elimination of cartels and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) in the United States. Additionally, in response to the February 20, 2025, U.S. State Department action designating six cartels and two transnational gangs as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) and Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs), the FBI developed the Counter Cartel Coordination Center to bring to bear all the FBI’s tools, resources, and skillsets to most effectively combat FTOs and SDGTs. Our actions in response to these designations have yielded significant results. Over the past three months, the FBI has doubled down on its efforts to take dangerous criminals off the streets and remove Tren de Aragua (TdA) terrorists from the country. For example, in March, working with our interagency partners, the FBI announced the apprehension of one of our Ten Most Wanted from Mexico—a key senior leader of the brutal MS-13 gang, Francisco Javier Roman-Bardales. This is the third fugitive the FBI and our partners have apprehended since the beginning of this year. Currently, FBI-led task forces are staffed with over 12,000 Federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial partners. Many of these task forces are focused on western hemisphere TCOs, cartels, violent crime, violent gangs, drug trafficking, child exploitation, and human trafficking across our nation’s communities. Since January 20, 2025, the FBI has made over 6,000 immigration-related arrests, 310 arrests of TdA members, and 136 arrests of MS-13 members.

Over the last few months, personnel across the FBI’s 55 field offices have participated in Operation Allied Corridor, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)-led operation to advance Title 8 enforcement priorities. The FBI, with support from ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), HSI, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and the United States Marshals Service (USMS), has targeted approximately 3,000 U.S.-based criminal aliens either associated with criminal organizations (TCOs and narcotics smuggling networks) or re-entry violators with criminal histories who are eligible for deportation and removal from the United States. We are starting to see incredible results because of task forces like these, and the country is safer as a result. Just recently, we announced the seizure of over $509 million in cocaine linked to cartel activity in Florida, and the arrests of 370 illegal aliens—including foreign fugitives wanted for murder—in a multi-agency targeted enforcement operation in Massachusetts.

The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs), located in each of the FBI’s 55 field offices, support President Trump’s Executive Orders and the Department of Justice’s focus on immigration enforcement while working in partnership with Department of Homeland Security components to address terrorism-related subjects eligible for immigration enforcement action. Additionally, the FBI is combatting evolving international terrorism threats as evidenced by the October 7 attack by Hamas in Israel and continued attempts of terrorist actors to infiltrate the United States as migrants. As a co-leader of the Department’s Joint Task Force October 7 (JTF 10-7), created by the Attorney General on February 5, 2025, the FBI will continue to work tirelessly to seek justice for the victims of the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack and address the ongoing threat posed by Hamas and its affiliates. The continued sharing of information among our numerous partners through JTTFs, statewide and regional fusion centers, and law enforcement partners (or partner associations) across the country, and our legal attaché offices around the world, remains a critical component in identifying, preventing, and responding to terrorism threats. We are also investigating numerous domestic terrorism incidents throughout the nation. In recent weeks, there have been numerous instances of vandalism, arson, and targeted shootings against Tesla vehicles, dealerships, and charging stations across the country. We have arrested seven individuals for their actions and will continue to vigorously investigate anyone who joins this pattern of violence. These acts of domestic terrorism will not be tolerated, and we will continue to hold these individuals accountable for their actions.

Cyber threats are increasing everyday within an already crowded field of nation-state and criminal actors, which remains one of the FBI’s biggest concerns. The PRC presents the greatest and most sophisticated cyber threat to U.S. public safety and national security. Last year, PRC actors, tracked publicly as Salt Typhoon, showed their brazenness when they broke into the networks of multiple telecommunications companies to steal customer call records data, compromise the private communications of a limited number of individuals, and copy certain sensitive information related to law enforcement. Other nation-states, like the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (“DPRK”), Iran, and Russia use espionage and cyberattacks to achieve their goals. Disturbingly, nation-state actors have obtained an increasing capacity for stealth in recent years, demonstrating the ability to maintain persistent, long-term access on U.S. networks without detection. Just as worrisome is their focus on compromising U.S. critical infrastructure, especially during a crisis. We are working to make it harder and more painful for malicious cyber actors and criminals to carry on their malicious activities.

As the lead federal agency for threat response, the FBI works seamlessly with domestic and international partners to defend U.S. networks, attribute malicious activity, sanction bad behavior, and take the fight to our adversaries overseas. We must impose consequences on cyber adversaries and use our collective law enforcement and intelligence capabilities to do so through joint, sequenced operations for maximum impact. And we must continue to work with the Department of State and other key departments and agencies to ensure that our foreign partners are able and willing to cooperate in our efforts to disrupt perpetrators of cybercrime.

Counterintelligence operations against nation-state adversaries mitigate grievous risk to U.S. national security. U.S. adversaries, including Russia, the PRC, and Iran continue to undermine our core institutions, and they are becoming more aggressive and more capable. The economic espionage threat posed by the PRC cannot be overstated. The PRC has deliberately created an environment that encourages intellectual property theft, using human intelligence officers, co-optees, corrupt corporate insiders, and sophisticated cyber intrusions. We have active PRC counterintelligence investigations across all 55 FBI field offices. The FBI’s Iran Threats Mission Center (ITMC) increases collaboration across all Iran threats—cyber, counterintelligence, and counterterrorism. The center synchronizes intelligence and operations on multiple joint initiatives and increases the FBI’s understanding of the Iran threat, contributing to the President’s National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-2), “Imposing Maximum Pressure on the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran” objectives.

The support of this committee in funding the FBI to do its part in thwarting these threats and facing these challenges is greatly appreciated. That support will allow us to establish strong capabilities and capacities to assess threats, share intelligence, leverage key technologies, and— in some respects, most importantly—hire the right people to serve as Special Agents, Intelligence Analysts, and professional staff. We have built, and are continuously enhancing, a workforce that possesses the skills and knowledge to deal with the complex threats and challenges we face today — and will face tomorrow. We are building a leadership cadre that views change and transformation as a positive tool for keeping the FBI focused on the key threats facing our nation.

As criminal and terrorist threats become more diverse and dangerous, the role of technology becomes increasingly important to our efforts; and keeping pace with technology remains a key concern for the future. The FBI Laboratory, operating out of state-of-the-art facilities in Quantico, Virginia, and Huntsville, Alabama, is one of the largest and most comprehensive forensic laboratories in the world. One example of the Lab’s key services and programs is the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), which allows over 200 law enforcement laboratories throughout the United States to compare over 25 million DNA profiles. In the last 20 years, CODIS has aided over 722,000 investigations, while maintaining its sterling reputation and the confidence of the American public.

In addition to addressing the extensive external threats facing our nation, the FBI will focus some of its resources to address the internal risk of non-compliance with all of the laws, rules, regulations and policy that apply to our work. We have been very clear that the FBI must create a culture of compliance that gives the American public the confidence that we will do our work objectively, impartially, and in strict adherence to the Constitution. Our broad mandate and sweeping authorities come with commensurate guardrails to protect U.S. citizens.

The FBI takes its responsibility of fiscal stewardship seriously and is looking at all available options to optimize existing resources and deliver more efficiently. Over the past two months, we have commenced the process to reallocate hundreds of positions from the National Capital Region out to field offices across the country to enhance investigative capacity and provide better support to federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial partners. This enhancement to field resources will increase the investigative capacity in 49 of our 55 field offices and will enable the FBI to focus these resources on addressing violent crime, gangs, drugs, counterintelligence, and terrorism threats.

In conclusion, the threats we face as a nation have never been greater or more diverse, and the expectations placed on the FBI have never been higher. With the requested resources, the FBI will have the talent, tools, and authorities to do more to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution.

Chairman Moran, Ranking Member Van Hollen, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I am happy to answer any questions you might have.