Children groomed for murder through video games, Europol warns

LONDON — Criminal networks are “weaponizing children” to commit torture and murder by recruiting them through multiplayer video games and smartphones — and parents often have no idea what’s happening, the boss of Europe’s law enforcement agency warns. 

These groups now pose the greatest single criminal threat to the European Union because they destabilize society by targeting children and destroying families, said Catherine De Bolle, executive director of Europol. 

“The weaponization of children for organized crime groups is what is going on at the moment on European soil,” she said in a joint interview with POLITICO and Welt. “They weaponize the children to torture or to kill. It’s not about petty theft anymore. It’s about big crimes.” 

The “worst case” Europol has seen was of a young boy who was ordered “to kill his younger sister, which happened,” she said. “It’s cruel, we have never seen this before.” 

She even suggested that children and young people are being used by hostile states and hybrid threat perpetrators as unwitting spies to eavesdrop on government buildings. 

The Europol chief is in a unique position to describe the criminal landscape threatening European security, as head of the EU agency responsible for intelligence coordination and supporting national police.

In a wide-ranging discussion, De Bolle also cautioned that the growth of artificial intelligence is having a dramatic impact, multiplying online crime, described how drug smugglers are now using submarines to ship cocaine from South America to Europe, and described an increasing threat to European society from Russia’s hybrid war. 

De Bolle’s comments come amid an ongoing debate about how to police the internet and social media to prevent young and vulnerable people from coming to harm. The greatest threat facing the EU from organized crime right now comes from groups that have “industrialized” the recruitment of children, she said: “Because [they are] the future of the European Union. If you lose them, you lose everything.”

From gaming to grooming

Criminals often begin the process of grooming children by joining their multiplayer video games, which have a chat function, and gaining their trust by discussing seemingly harmless topics like pets and family life. 

Then, they will switch to a closed chat where they will move on to discussing more sinister matters, and persuade the child to share personal details like their address. At that point, the criminals can bribe or blackmail the child into committing violence, including torture, self-harm, murder and even suicide. 

Europol is aware of 105 instances in which minors were involved in violent crimes “performed as a service” — including 10 contract killings. Many attempted murders fail because children are inexperienced, the agency said.

“We also have children who do not execute the order and then, for instance, [the criminals] kill the pet of the child, so that the child knows very well, ‘We know where you live, we know who you are, you will obey, and if you don’t, we will go even further to kill your mother or your father,’” De Bolle warned. 

Criminals will also offer children money to commit a crime — as much as $20,000 for a killing, sometimes they pay and sometimes they don’t. While these networks often target children who are vulnerable because they have psychological problems or are bullied at school, healthy and happy children are also at risk, De Bolle said. “It’s also about others, youngsters who are not vulnerable but just want new shoes — shoes that are very expensive.” 

Sometimes young people are even recruited for hybrid war by state actors, she said. “You also have it with hybrid threat actors that are looking for the crime as a service model — the young perpetrators to listen to the foreign state, to listen to the communication around buildings.”

Once police catch a child, the criminals abandon them and move to groom a new child to turn into a remote-operated weapon. 

“Parents blame themselves in a lot of cases. They do not understand how it is possible,” she said. “The problem is you don’t have access to everything your child does and you respect also the privacy of your children. But as a parent, you need to talk about the dangers of the internet.”

Drugs and AI are also a problem

Among the new criminal methods crossing Europol’s desks, two stand out: The use of so-called narco-submarines to smuggle drugs like cocaine from South America into the EU and the growth in AI technology fueling an explosion in online fraud that enforcement agencies are virtually powerless to stop. 

Instead of shipping cocaine into the ports of Hamburg, Rotterdam and Antwerp through containers, criminals have diversified their methods, De Bolle said. One key route is to sail semi-submersible vessels from South America to Europe’s North Atlantic coast, where speedboats meet them and offload the illegal cargo via Portugal, according to Europol’s information. 

While Europe now is “overflooded with drugs,” criminal organizations may make more money, more easily through online fraud, she said. “Artificial intelligence is a multiplier for crime,” she said. “Everything is done a thousand times more and faster. The abuse of artificial intelligence lies in phishing emails — you do not recognize it very easily with phishing emails anymore because the language is correct.” 

She said “romance fraud” is also “booming,” as “people look for love, also online.”

“With deepfakes and with voice automation systems, it’s very difficult for a law enforcement authority to recognise that from a genuine picture. The technology is not there yet to [tell] the difference,” De Bolle added. 

De Bolle said Europol needed to be able to access encrypted phone messages with a judge’s authorization to disrupt these criminal networks. “When a judge decides that we need to have access to data, the online providers should be forced to give us access to this encrypted communication,” she said.

Otherwise, “we will be blind and then we cannot do our job.”