New non-profit seeks to get justice for cybercrime victims

Internet and cyber crimes cause financial loss and have emotional impact for people around the world. Now though a new non-profit organization has been formed to pursue justice for victims of these crimes.

Intelligence for Good aims to make the internet a safer place for everyone, and to ensure that cybercriminals are not only brought to justice but fear the consequences of scamming innocent people.

To achieve this it uses data collected from victims, industry and open sources to conduct analysis and investigation that will expose the individuals and networks behind these crimes and empower legal teams with the information needed to pursue cases against them.

“Most victims of internet-enabled crimes suffer without hope of recovery or justice, and face devastating financial and emotional loss. The Intelligence for Good team is dedicated to rewriting the endings of these stories, and preventing others from falling victim to these scams," says Robin Pugh, executive director of Intelligence for Good and CEO of DarkTower. "We are building a sustainable ecosystem of justice that listens to the voices of victims, investigates how these crimes work, trains cybercrime intelligence analysts and legal professionals with an investigative mindset, and works toward disruption in concert with law enforcement."

Intelligence for Good is focused on:

• Identifying criminal typologies and emerging techniques used to commit scams, everything from romance and cryptocurrency scams to identity theft and call center scams.
• Providing legal teams with the resources needed to identify the appropriate path for either civil or criminal prosecution, prepare for and expedite the prosecution of criminals to ensure that all options for disruption and recovery are pursued.
• Supplementing the efforts of law enforcement and agents of justice -- who are outnumbered in addressing the volume of crimes committed against individual citizens -- with additional investigation resources.
• Connecting victims to respected resources for support and recovery so they know they are not alone, and can provide valuable information that will contribute to the process of justice.

With a framework in place to effectively collect, preserve and analyze this data for the purposes of identifying criminals and their networks, Intelligence for Good can identify fresh websites, emerging methodologies, and techniques being used to commit scams. Through social network analysis, many of these scammers can have true identities revealed and networks of fake or bot accounts exposed.

Intelligence for Good has been named the winner of an October 2023 Gula Tech Foundation grant competition for supporting the National Cybersecurity Strategy pillar of disrupting threat actors. It's also partnering with trusted victim support advocate organizations that are highly trained and capable of providing direct support to victims. Crime victims will be referred to those partners for support, and those partners will provide critical data back to Intelligence for Good for further analysis and investigation.

You can find out more on the Intelligence for Good site.

Image Credit: Africa Studio / Shutterstock