The volume of reports that U.S. banks and other institutions filed on transactions potentially linked to the online manipulation and sexual abuse of children jumped nearly 20 percent from 2019 to 2020, the first full year of the novel coronavirus pandemic, U.S. officials said Thursday. The year-on-year increase represents the fourth in as many years, contributing to a staggering 147 percent rise in SARs related to the suspected financing, production and dissemination of images or other sexually explicit materials involving minors from 2017 to 2020, the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network disclosed. School closures and travel bans during the...
print