Europol targets “violence-as-a-service” gangs

Europol has joined forces with law enforcement from eight countries to tackle “violence-as-a-service” gangs where young children are groomed into committing violent acts for cash.

Europol has launched a new operation, OTF GRIMM, to dismantle the rising trend of “violence-as-a-service,” where children are recruited to carry out serious acts of organized crime.

Authorities from Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway are all involved in Europol’s latest task force.

“Violence-as-a-service” models usually “outsource violent acts to criminal service providers,” Europol said.

Typically, criminal gangs will find young children or teenagers who are willing to commit violent acts like threats, assaults, or even murders, for a fee.

The way criminal gangs groom young children into violence is often through social media and other online means.

These vulnerable people are often coerced or groomed into committing acts such as drug trafficking, cyber attacks, online fraud, or violent extortion, Europol adds.

While this is not new, as Cybernews has previously covered children and young adults being groomed by “extremely violent” online cults looking to exploit the youth, this threat has grown dramatically over the years.

Much like these violent online cults, children are being brought to criminal gangs to commit crimes with the promise of money, community, or status.

Social media platforms and online messaging apps are frequently being used to lure victims into becoming perpetrators.

Europol states that the communication between perpetrators and young aspiring criminals is coded, meaning that kids and criminals communicate via memes. Criminals will also gamify tasks to make them more appealing to young people.

The European law enforcement cooperation agency states that the task force will conduct intelligence sharing and cooperative investigations across various areas.

OFT GRIMM will also map VaaS groups, dismantle, and identify criminal providers of VaaS, and work with social media providers to clamp down on recruitment via social media.