How Telegram became a hunting ground for crims – and cops

Telegram says it is striving to limit the abuse of its platform as much as possible. (Image: Depositphotos)

Sat, 05 Oct 2024

By Joel Schectman, Sam Schechner and Alan CullisonWhen federal agent Chris Janczewski was trying to strangle the flow of money to an al-Qaeda network in 2020, he first considered infiltrating an invite-only forum or hunting for clues on the dark web. Then the US Internal Revenue Service criminal investigator found the group talking openly about its scheme in a public forum on Telegram – one of the thousands of channels where people discuss illicit activities ranging from peddling child porn to selling stolen identities. The terr...

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