MONTPELIER, Vt. (WCAX) – Vermont authorities are using a very good boy to sniff out very bad actors. But as Cam Smith reports, the attorney general’s office’s K-9 is just one small part of a much larger operation to track down cyber criminals who prey on children.
Although his handlers say he’s basically a goofball at heart, he knows that when the vest goes on, playtime is over. Meet Mojo, an eight-year-old yellow lab and a member of the Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force in Vermont’s Attorney General’s Office.
His specialty is finding electronic devices. “He’s searching for a particular odor. And when he finds it, he either sits or lays down if it’s low. An investigator will search that area and find the device,” said VT-ICAC’s Matthew Raymond, Mojo’s handler. He says he can sniff out things like hard drives, small memory cards, and even cell phones that could contain child pornography.
“Unfortunately, it is very common. Much more common than I think the average person realizes, and it’s incredibly upsetting,” said Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark.
We first introduced you to Mojo when he joined the task force in 2017. At the time, Raymond says they got anywhere from 60 to 70 cyber tips per month. But now Mojo’s skills are in higher demand. In the last fiscal year, they investigated nearly 800 tips, all filtered through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
“With the advances in technology — which have been great in many aspects — unfortunately provides a larger avenue for these bad actors to operate in,” Raymond said. While he says Mojo’s role is vital in sniffing out evidence that can help bring a case to court, this operation at its heart still relies on people, not paws. The small team of five full-time investigators spends hours combing the dark web, digging into tips from police, the public, and internet companies before even enlisting Mojo’s unique skill set. “At the end of each one of these tips could be a child that’s not crying out for help but needs help and needs rescuing, and over my career, we’ve rescued dozens and dozens of kids that way.”