Category: United States of America

Remarks prepared for delivery.

Thank you, Peter. I do wish we could be together in person, but COVID has of course forced us all to find new ways of getting together. And new ways of doing business. And we’re not alone. It turns out, unfortunately, that the pandemic has led criminals to new and creative ways of doing business, too.

I’d like to talk to you today about some of the top financial crime threats and trends we’re seeing at the FBI, what we’re doing to counter those threats and stop those trends. I’ll also share some thoughts about what all this means for banks.

Let’s start with a prototypical fraud example from this past year. It’s one you may have heard of: As most of you know, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) allows businesses to borrow up to $10 million to, essentially, make payroll and keep their employees working. Last April, a man named Maurice Fayne, who owns a business called Flame Trucking, applied to United Community Bank for a PPP loan.

Mr. Fayne wanted United Community Bank to disburse $3.7 million to him. And to get it, Fayne certified to the bank that his business employed 107 people and had an average monthly payroll of nearly $1.5 million. Fayne said that the loan proceeds would be used to pay workers and ongoing business expenses. Based on the representations in Fayne’s application, the Georgia-based bank funded a loan of more than $2 million.

Within days, Fayne, who also starred in the reality TV program Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta, allegedly used those funds to purchase $85,000 in jewelry, lease a Rolls Royce, and pay $40,000 in child support. Oh, and he dispersed another $230,000 to associates who helped him run a Ponzi scheme. Needless to say, that’s not the kind of “payroll” contemplated by the CARES Act.

Fayne’s now been charged with bank fraud, making a false statement to a federally insured financial institution, and money laundering. And we’re in the process of seizing $700,000 back from him.

As this audience likely knows, PPP loan applications must be processed by a participating financial institution. If a PPP loan application is approved, the lender funds the loan using its own money, which is 100% guaranteed by the Small Business Administration (SBA).

The good news for United Community Bank, and other banks like it, is that PPP loans are guaranteed by the SBA even if the borrower’s application turns out to have been based on fraud. The SBA will review the loan to ensure the lender followed the program rules in approving and servicing the loan, and if so, will purchase the loan from the victim bank.

The bad news, as a lot of you know, is the immense cost in time and resources that frauds like this impose on banks like United Community Bank. CARES Act frauds have highlighted the burdens and challenges that financial institutions face when trying to undo the damage done by the fraudsters. And for banks in particular, it takes time and energy to prove on the back end that they did their part at the due diligence stage.

At bottom, illicit actors are opportunists. So it’s no surprise that they would attempt to exploit the global COVID pandemic to enrich themselves. That’s why one theme I’ll return to again and again today is the vital importance of working together—law enforcement, regulatory agencies, and the private sector—to stop criminals from defrauding our banks and otherwise abusing the financial system to advance their crimes.

Financial Crime Trends

When it comes to evolving technologies, criminal actors have all too often been quick studies in an effort to stay one step ahead of law enforcement. Financial crimes are no exception. Over the past nine months, emerging financial crime trends have revolved around COVID fraud and CARES Act stimulus funds—fraud involving unemployment insurance, PPP loans, and Small Business Economic Injury Disaster Loans. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3, which allows the public to report suspected internet-facilitated criminal activity to the FBI, has received more than 26,000 complaints specifically related to COVID-19 fraud schemes. That’s 26,000 fraud complaints—and you can bet banks are roped in, one way or another, in just about all of them.

In response, we’ve established a COVID-19 Fraud Response Working Group with the Department of Justice, other law enforcement partners, and civil regulators. The group is going after criminals trying to exploit this pandemic to make a quick buck. In one well-publicized case, former NFL Player Joshua Bellamy was charged with wire fraud and bank fraud for conspiring to obtain millions of dollars in fraudulent PPP loans. A bank disbursed to the former New York Jet—and as a Giants fan, I feel compelled to stress that he was a New York Jet—a $1.2 million loan for his entertainment company.

As charged, he then used the proceeds to spend more than $100,000 on Dior, Gucci, jewelry, and tens of thousands more at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida. But that wasn’t enough. Bellamy was allegedly so pleased with this fraud scheme that he looped in his friends and family. And in the end, the scheme involved the preparation of at least 90 fraudulent applications and bank payouts of at least $17.4 million. That means banks are on the hook for that $17.4 million unless or until they can prove to the SBA that they diligently followed the program rules in approving and servicing those loans.

In addition to COVID-related fraud, we’re seeing a range of other fraud schemes, and one thing that we’re seeing across them is the use of money mules. As this audience is acutely aware, criminals often use money mules—that is, middlemen—to deposit illegally acquired funds into bank accounts. Money mules pass funds through wire transfers or virtual currency to add another layer between criminals and victims. Why? To make it that much harder for both banks and law enforcement to follow the trail. That’s why it’s absolutely essential that banks and law enforcement work together to fight back.

And with help from financial institutions, we are fighting back. Just last week, the Justice Department announced the results of an initiative that took action against more than 2,000 money mules. Two thousand. These individuals help victimize everyone from veterans to grandparents, and they put banks right in the middle of it all.

The opportunism doesn’t end there. With a growing number of people doing most of their shopping from home to avoid COVID, we’ve seen a rise in e-skimming, where hackers steal personal and payment information as consumers shop online. They then use that information to make fraudulent purchases themselves. Or they sell it to someone who will.

Financial institutions, like credit card companies, can then find themselves on the hook. Our private sector partners indicate that e-skimming attacks have grown by at least 20% during the pandemic. We also continue to see a rise in synthetic identity fraud, where large amounts of personal data stolen during an online breach are combined with false information to create new identities. Fraudsters use these synthetic identities to apply for credit, eventually establishing credit history and higher credit limits. Just one bad guy can accumulate hundreds of accounts simultaneously, using techniques like credit piggybacking to accelerate the accrual of higher credit limits. And all this financial fraud then lands at your doorstep.

Money Laundering

Along with these emerging trends in financial crimes, money laundering schemes continue to underpin many of our investigations. We’ve identified money laundering networks that support otherwise unrelated criminal networks, including a mix of international criminal organizations and national security threats. We’re also seeing things like trade-based money laundering, which uses trade transactions to disguise criminals’ ill-gotten gains. To combat these phenomena, we’re working with other government agencies, financial institutions, and other private sector partners. We’re engaging with leaders, like you, in the banking and technology industries to enhance the FBI’s capabilities and exchange information. And we’re using technology to help make the most of the copious data that financial fraudsters can’t help but produce.

Platforms like IC3 give us the ability to ingest large amounts of data and identify and analyze fraud patterns that may not be visible to a complainant. For instance, a fraud victim in one city can be matched up to a pattern of similar fraud victims across the country through analytical reviews of data sets—allowing us to broaden our investigations and identify other potential subjects.

Our field offices also have Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) working groups that comb data to identify new threat patterns in their area. These types of analyses help our field offices to both stay well-informed and be more efficient in fighting financial crime.

Staying ahead of the threat requires leveraging our technological resources to their greatest potential. So we continue to look for creative ways to transform our data sets into actionable intelligence and investigations. Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) data is a great example where the public/private partnerships help us combat criminal activity in the digital age. The financial intelligence generated by BSA reporting is critical to law enforcement’s investigation and prosecution of both criminal activities and national security threats. Information from SARs, Currency Transaction Reports, Reports of International Transportation of Currency or Monetary Instruments, and other BSA reporting can also help law enforcement agencies see the broader picture of a criminal network. That data allows us to map networks, trace funds, and ultimately, thwart fraud and protect banks and other victims.

Take SARs. SAR narratives capture an incredible range of conduct. Let’s say a foreign institution establishes a U.S. bank account in order to conduct illicit transactions in U.S. dollars. Law enforcement can use reports of these correspondent bank transactions to follow financial trails, investigate specific individuals and entities, identify leads, connect the dots, and advance investigations.

Virtual Currencies

We and our partners aren’t the only ones recognizing the need for creativity and innovation. Our success in working with banks to fight money laundering schemes means criminals are finding innovative ways to exploit new technologies to “clean” dirty money. Virtual currencies enable the almost instantaneous transfer of value to a recipient anywhere in the world. In some cases, though, there is then very little “paper trail” to follow should an investigation become necessary. And this issue is exacerbated by cryptocurrency tumblers—that is, services that mix tracked and clean cryptocurrencies to hide transactions and hinder law enforcement’s ability to track open ledger currencies, like Bitcoin.

As this technology proliferates, banks are becoming more comfortable with a legitimate virtual asset risk profile as part of their business. In July, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued a public letter allowing any national bank to hold the cryptographic keys associated with cryptocurrencies in what are essentially virtual vaults, just as they’d hold stock certificates for investors. Like banks, payment processors are also increasingly comfortable integrating virtual assets. PayPal, for example, now supports several cryptocurrencies, enabling users to buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrency directly through PayPal. And by early 2021, PayPal plans to allow customers to use crypto assets within its merchant network to pay for goods and services.

It should be no surprise, then, that as various legitimate uses of virtual currencies become more common, these currencies have also moved to center stage for criminals. We now see predatory actors using virtual assets across all criminal platforms to launder illicit funds. And legitimate users of cryptocurrency markets and exchanges have now become tempting targets for both criminal and nation-state actors. That’s because stolen funds can be instantly transferred, and there’s no central banking entity that can immediately freeze assets and pay victims.

We see actors across a wide range of threats using virtual currencies to purchase criminal tools like botnets, launder their illicit proceeds, evade sanctions, and otherwise try to prevent us from “following the money” back to them. Virtual currencies also enable additional anonymization tools like malware-as-a-service and other dark market criminal products that make tracing illicit activity that much harder. This kind of thing used to be limited to sophisticated adversaries. But now, even relatively unsophisticated actors are using virtual currencies to cloak their activities. That proliferation requires our agents and analysts working almost every type of case to be able to recognize virtual currencies; apply sophisticated analytic techniques and tools; and use them to obtain evidence and develop leads. All this has required a significant investment in resources and training for our investigators and analysts.

As a result, the FBI has developed deep expertise in virtual currencies. We’re now getting advanced analytic techniques and tools into the hands of our professionals investigating everything from child exploitation to public corruption. And we’re drawing connections from work we do across a range of investigations to help map illicit payment networks. We’re being creative—seizing virtual currencies when appropriate, working with foreign partners to follow criminal trails overseas, and collaborating with our colleagues at other investigative agencies, the SEC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and of course DOJ to stay on top of threats as they evolve. We’re also collaborating with the financial industry and with academics, both to further advance our understanding and use of existing technology, and to proactively position ourselves to see what’s on the horizon.

Technology affects every kind of threat we face. Criminals, terrorists, and nation state actors will all continue to use technology to try and anonymize and facilitate illicit activity. Which is why we must continue to invest in our own technological resources to ensure that we’re staying ahead of each threat.

Partnerships

That brings me to perhaps the most important section of my remarks: partnerships. Moving forward, we’ve got to use our respective strengths to work toward a common purpose: keeping our economy, our citizens, and our companies safe, secure, and confident in a digitally connected world.

We’ve got to find even more ways to work together, public and private sector. It’s not just the best option, it’s really the only option. The FBI has a long history of cooperating with law enforcement and private sector partners across the globe to confront complex criminal threats. That kind of team approach is how we’ll successfully combat financial crime. We’re exchanging valuable information with the private sector through conferences like these, and our daily discussions with corporate partners are also informing our strategic focus, by making sure we know what threats most concern you.

Overseas, we’ve got legal attachés sharing intelligence and building partnerships with both foreign law enforcement and security services and enabling a virtuous cycle of cooperation. We pass information developed through our investigations to our foreign partners, including warnings about frauds perpetrated against financial institutions and American citizens. Our partners who respond to those leads can in turn provide us with more information about the threats we all face. That information feeds our global investigations and helps us discover even more indicators the private sector can use to mitigate these threats. It also provides us with more arrest opportunities, allows us to recover more illicit funds, and it puts us in a position to generate more information to pass back to our partners in a true virtuous cycle. We’re making significant strides, we’ve had a number of successes, but we still need to collaborate even more.

You’re bringing expertise to the table. You know the risks to your institutions, you’re identifying the fraudsters, and you’re going to see emerging threats coming down the road. At the FBI, we have unique expertise too. We’re able to perform analysis and combine that with the intelligence we collect to alert you to what we’re seeing out there and how these emerging frauds can affect your financial institutions.

In turn, we need financial institutions to continue to work with us through SARs and other means and to work with our field offices to initiate cases. Which is why I hope you have a strong working relationship with the special agents and special agents in charge working in your communities. If you don’t, I encourage you to work with them to talk about your concerns and let us know how we can best help you. We now have private sector coordinators in every FBI field office. If you haven’t met that person in your city, you should make the connection.

Early notification to law enforcement can limit your losses and those of your customers. And we can respond a lot faster in times of crisis if we already have a relationship with you—if we already know your facilities and your people. As the old saying goes, the best time to patch the roof is when the sun is shining. We’ve got to keep helping each other, so we can protect each other from threats we all face. And we must place an even greater emphasis on information sharing than ever before.

* * *

Technological advances give financial criminals the means to commit crimes in new and nefarious ways. But when it comes down to it, it’s the same as it ever was: It’s all about the money. Criminals will go after it any way they can. And they never let a crisis go to waste. This pandemic has been no exception. And they’re going to exploit this environment in ways that offer the least chance of getting caught—anonymously, from behind a keyboard.

As illicit actors become more sophisticated and have greater access to technology, it means we have to be smarter and quicker about preventing and stopping fraud. The good news is that while financial criminals have access to more technological tools and institutions than ever before, we do too. And we have each other. You’re innovating, and we, too, will continue to evolve to counter the actors where they operate.

I want to thank you for your insight and your expertise as we continue to work together to combat ever-evolving financial crimes. I’ll end with a call to action. Please engage with the FBI and your local field offices. We need to keep finding ways to help each other.

Thank you. Happy to take a few questions.

Remarks prepared for delivery.

It’s an honor to be here to talk about how the FBI is fighting the ever-evolving cyber threat.

I do wish we could be together in person, but COVID has of course made us all have to find new ways of getting together. And new ways of doing business.

There’s a lot of talk about “pivoting” today. It’s become kind of a COVID-era buzzword.

Pivoting to host conferences, like this one, virtually. Businesses pivoting to meet the changing needs of customers.

But I’m sure many of you would say that’s nothing new.

Organizations that stand the test of time know that pivoting is crucial to staying relevant and being successful.

In his book, The Infinite Game, author Simon Sinek gave a great example—and a fitting one for a forum discussion.

The Swiss company Victorinox has been around since 1884. Everyone knows Victorinox as the maker of the Swiss Army knife.

But after September 11, we faced new restrictions on what people could carry on airplanes, and sales of Swiss Army knives declined dramatically.

Victorinox didn’t crumble, though. They pivoted to making travel gear, watches, and fragrances—a change that has helped the company nearly double its revenue compared to the days before 9/11. And that’s because they proved themselves both agile and resilient.

At the FBI, we have a track record of being able to pivot when necessary, too. Like when we changed gears to focus on organized crime in the 1970s and 80s or terrorism after 9/11.

We’ve brought that same approach to protecting the American people—and our businesses—from foreign cyber operations and significant cybercrime.

And it’s not just the FBI, of course. The whole cyber community has evolved, together, to meet this changing threat.

We all understand that the old approach of tackling the cyber threat one case at a time isn’t going to cut it.

We’ve got to take an enterprise approach—one that involves government agencies, private industry, researchers, and nonprofits, across the U.S. and around the world.

And we’ve got to use our respective strengths to work toward a common purpose: keeping our countries—and our companies—safe, secure, and confident in a digitally connected world.

I want to talk today about the FBI’s new cyber strategy. And about the importance of working together to tackle the cyber threat as a global community. And then I’m looking forward to a conversation that dives deeper into some of these topics.

FBI Cyber Strategy

At the FBI, we’ve been fighting the cyber threat for many years now.

We began our early high-tech crime effort in the mid-1990s, and created our Cyber Division in 2002.

We’ve become known for our efforts to call out destabilizing and damaging cyber activity by nation-state actors.

Like when we announced charges last month against the Russian intelligence officers behind the most destructive cyber campaign ever perpetrated by a single group, including the NotPetya and Black Energy attacks. Along with the Olympic Destroyer malware, and other outrageous misconduct, that together caused havoc in global shipping, power, public health, and the Olympic Games.

But we are also particularly focused on the threat posed by cyber criminals.

Schemes like ransomware have always caused disruption and financial loss, but today they’ve escalated to a whole new level—shutting down schools, interrupting key governmental services, crippling hospitals, and threatening critical infrastructure.

We’re putting our new cyber strategy in place to stay ahead of this ever-evolving threat landscape.

Just like we’ve done throughout our 112-year history of fighting crime and terrorism, our goal is to impose risk and consequences on bad actors in cyberspace—whoever and wherever they are.

Put more bluntly: We want to make it harder and more painful for hackers and criminals to do what they’re doing.

An essential prong of the strategy is to leverage our enduring partnerships—in both investigating cybercrime and raising the costs to criminal actors.

That means we’re leveraging the information we obtain through our investigations to also enable our partners to take action.

For those less familiar with the U.S. system, the FBI is America’s premier federal investigative service.

And within our government’s cyber ecosystem, the FBI focuses on threats. Not just investigating discrete incidents but making it our business to understand who and where our cyber adversaries are, how they operate, and how we can weaken them.

Our partner-focused strategy means that in addition to fueling criminal prosecutions, information from our investigations gives treasury officials the means to cut criminals off from the global financial system.

It gives our global law enforcement partners the means to seize malicious infrastructure and locate and arrest criminals hiding in their jurisdictions.

And, vitally, that information arms private-sector network defenders around the world with technical indicators they need to protect themselves, as well as the ability to shut down criminal infrastructure, and kick bad guys off their platforms and networks.

The point isn’t who claims credit. It’s achieving safety, security, and confidence, for all of us, in our digitally connected world.

We have a long history of cooperating with law enforcement and private-sector partners across the world to confront complex cybercrime threats.

Think of our disruptions of the Kelihos botnet in 2017, worldwide business email compromise scams in Operation WireWire in 2018 and ReWired in 2019, and the major cybercrime money laundering group QQAAZZ just last month.

And we’ve been cultivating the partnerships we rely upon today for longer than that.

Some of you will recall the 2016 effort to disrupt the cybercrime infrastructure-as-a-service network called Avalanche, which enabled more than two dozen of the world’s most pernicious malware variants.

That herculean effort included contributions by investigators in more than 40 jurisdictions, Europol, the Shadowserver Foundation, a German research institute, ICANN, national CERTs, and domain registries around the world.

And we’ve continued to build from there. More and stronger partners, focused together on stopping and deterring those who would attack us.

Global Partners Standing Together

We’ve got to continue to work together as global partners. That’s not just the best option, it’s the only option.

That team approach, especially with the private sector, is central to how we’re addressing cyber in today’s FBI.

So we’ve created unique hubs where members of the cyber community can work alongside each other and build long-term, trusting relationships.

For example, we’re now co-located with U.S. and international partners in industry, academia, and the financial sector as part of the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance in both Pittsburgh and New York City.

That effort has been so successful that we’ve expanded it—we now also partner with companies in the defense sector, through our National Defense Cyber Alliance

We’re exchanging valuable tactical information with the private sector in those forums and elsewhere, but our daily discussions with corporate partners are also informing our strategic focus, by making sure we know what threats most concern them.

Overseas, we’ve got legal attachés around the world and skilled cyber agents in embassies sharing intelligence and building partnerships with both foreign law enforcement and security services—and enabling a virtuous cycle of cooperation.

We pass information developed through our investigations to partners abroad—including warnings about intrusions at victim companies and institutions.

Our partners who respond to those leads can then in turn provide us with more information about the threats we all face—feeding our global investigations, helping us discover even more indicators the private sector can use to mitigate the threat, more malicious infrastructure we can target ourselves or notify private sector partners of, more arrest opportunities, which leads us to more useful information to pass back to our partners, and so on.

We’re helped by the fact that so many of the companies we deal with are multi-national themselves—able to take information and make global use of it, and able to provide us with a global view of the threats they face.

We’re taking all the tools at our disposal and bringing them to the table, so that we can fight this threat together.

As the members of the forum know well, we’ve all become hyper connected.

And that has empowered people the world over—the good guys and the bad guys alike.

Because today’s economy lives, in large part, in the digital realm. And the more we expand our global footprint, and the more we do business in other countries, the more we can achieve, together. But, at the same time, the more risk we assume on the cyber front.

That’s why we can’t take our collective eyes off the cyber threat landscape. We can’t hold back from building on our connections. We’ve got to keep moving forward.

We’ve got to keep helping each other, so that we can protect each other against threats we all face together.

And we’ve got to place an even greater emphasis on partnerships and information sharing than we ever have before.

* * *

We won’t make any headway if we’re each off doing our own thing, because our adversaries rely on gaps in our community.

They like it when we’re not sharing information—when one player doesn’t trust the other.

We’ve got to keep building strong relationships with old allies and new partners alike.

We’ve got to learn to pivot where we need to.

And we’ve got to find innovative solutions to new problems if we want to maintain an edge against our adversaries in the cyber world.

At the FBI, we’re proud of our history of innovation—of more than a century of adapting and evolving to meet changing threats.

And there’s no issue requiring more imagination and willingness to evolve than in cyber.

I was excited to learn about the forum’s Partnerships Against Cybercrime study and pleased that experts from our Cyber Division participated.

We’ve got to continue to innovate and cooperate to generate outcomes much faster than was previously possible.

I’m hopeful that the report’s recommendations will keep us moving toward the trust, agility, scale, and speed we need in our partnerships to truly impact the cybercrime threat.

And I’ll end by leaving you with a call to action. If you haven’t already, please engage with private and government partners in this fight.

Invest in one of the “nodes” the report contemplates. Find ways to join your cybersecurity experts with like-minded experts from other industries and sectors—and we’ll make each other stronger.

The FBI is ready to play.

Thank you for your willingness to hear from me today.

Remarks as delivered.

Hi, everyone. I’m grateful for the opportunity to speak with you, again, as part of this year’s IACP conference.

Over my first three years as FBI Director, I’ve met and talked with law enforcement leaders from all 50 states, and from about 50 countries around the world. And I wish we could’ve re-connected again in person today, because of how much I enjoy getting to meet and engage with so many of you face-to-face each year. The fact that this conference is virtual is just another reminder of the extraordinary challenges we’ve all had to face over this past year.

The Current Environment

Our law enforcement family has been tested in ways that we never imagined.

For the past seven months, day in and day out, officers across our country and around the world have epitomized bravery and resilience by serving others despite the dangers of this global pandemic. With all the worry and uncertainty out there, law enforcement has stepped up—we’ve kept coming to work because we know that we can never let our guard down.

Of course, our own people are far from immune to the hardship and anxiety caused by COVID. Law enforcement is already a dangerous enough profession. Here in the U.S., the number of officers killed in the line of duty in 2020—from things like shootings and car incidents—is already up troublingly from last year. Yet, our law enforcement deaths from COVID alone—in effect, a whole new category—surpass even this year’s increased felonious line-of-duty deaths.

These are terrible and sobering losses, and sadly, more are sure to come. But the nature of our profession means we have to persevere in the face of this crisis—and we have done just that.

Beyond COVID, other recent events have created unique challenges for police agencies across our country.

We’ve seen violence and destruction of property at otherwise lawful protests across U.S. cities. All too often, the primary agitators are dangerous extremists who seek to sow discord and divide our country, not to bring about peaceful change. Many of our officers have been called into action, and put in harm’s way, to contain the violence that has jeopardized the rights and safety of our citizens. Some have even taken undeserved criticism for their efforts.

We’ve had to work together to ensure that both our law enforcement officers on the front lines and our citizens remain safe—particularly those citizens trying to peacefully exercise their First Amendment rights in the midst of this violence. Because the voices of people demonstrating to support the bedrock principles of justice and equality deserve to be heard.

As we all know, the fundamental job of law enforcement is to protect and serve all citizens. And we can’t do our jobs without the faith and trust of the American people. When we see incidents where some of our fellow citizens are killed or have their rights violated by law enforcement officers—incidents when public servants fail at their most basic duties—we see that trust erode. And when citizens believe we haven’t lived up to that trust, it’s understandable that they want to speak out.

As law enforcement leaders, we have an obligation to listen and engage with those who are calling for change. We’ve got to work to combat that loss of trust—trust we’ve worked so hard and so long to build; the trust that we need to do our work, and that our communities deserve.

I know this is a priority for every chief, sheriff, and superintendent across the spectrum of policing.

None of us has all the answers, but like you, I support honest conversations about how we in law enforcement can strengthen public confidence in our organizations and improve our relations with all the communities we serve.

While the world has changed in new and unexpected ways this year, many things have unfortunately stayed the same.

Last year in Chicago, I spoke with you about a number of pressing issues—like maintaining lawful access to electronic evidence against proliferating warrant-proof encryption, reducing deaths and violence against our officers, and improving mental health in our ranks.

If anything, these issues have become even more important over the past year. Every day, law enforcement officers face any number of threats to their safety. As I mentioned earlier, the number of officers feloniously killed in the line of duty this year is up notably from last year. At the time I’m recording these remarks, there have already been 38 felonious line-of-duty deaths in 2020, compared with 32 by this time in 2019. That’s 38 of you I’ve found myself calling individually to offer my sympathies and support. And sadly, given the trends, by the time you’re watching this, that number will almost certainly be higher.

In late August, early September of this year, during a single 15-day period, I made seven of those calls—that’s basically one every other day. The average age of the officer killed was only 36 years old, and he or she had served for an average of nine years. Each officer was a son or daughter, and many were mothers and fathers. All were beloved community members who sought to serve their fellow citizens. Each paid the ultimate price for their selfless devotion to duty. And let’s not forget the scores of others who have been injured in the line of duty and survived, but whose lives are forever changed.

As I’ve said repeatedly, but doesn’t get said nearly enough, it takes an incredibly special person to get up every morning and put his or her life on the line for a total stranger. Frankly, it’s hard for me to understand why more people don’t seem to appreciate that.

Our officers, deputies, and agents are understandably concerned about the increasing dangers they face, and the heightened scrutiny of everything they do. We, as leaders, have a duty to keep safe those on the front lines who are keeping all of us safe. I know everyone listening to me right now is committed to doing just that.

Part of the solution is working together to see how we can improve our engagement with the people we have sworn to protect.

That starts with recruiting and retaining talented people—folks who use good judgment, act with professionalism, and are committed to serving and protecting others. I know recruiting has been a challenge for a lot of your departments, and we at the FBI will continue to work with you to coordinate events that promote the important work you do—because we are all in this together.

It also means that we have to redouble our efforts to listen to the citizens and communities we serve—to hear their concerns, to answer their questions, and to assure them of our commitment to protecting—and respecting—the rights of all citizens. Now many of you are already doing this, and I encourage you to stay the course and keep doing it.

We also need data to better assess the millions of interactions each year between law enforcement and our citizens. That’s why the FBI developed the National Use-of-Force Data Collection, and I’m grateful to IACP for helping us promote the collection of use-of-force statistics across law enforcement agencies. Two thousand nineteen was the first year we collected data—and back in July, we released the participation statistics. The agencies who submitted use-of-force data last year represented 41 percent of all federal, state, local, and tribal sworn officers. That’s a great start, but we need to build on it.

I recognize that some departments may face both technical and policy-related challenges in submitting this data. The FBI stands ready to provide any assistance we can with the submission process—because collecting and sharing accurate police use-of-force data is the best way to make sure that we’re having informed conversations about police reforms.

Threat Overview

Violent Crime

Communities and law enforcement across this country need our leadership more than ever—because the threats we’re facing are only becoming more challenging and more complex. So I’d like to take just a few minutes to talk about some of those shared threats.

First, violent crime.

We’ve seen a spike in serious violent crime in a number of American cities this year—including increases in murders and aggravated assaults. These types of crimes unsettle our communities and undermine our citizens’ most basic sense of security. For many of you, violent crime remains the most significant threat you face in your jurisdiction.

Fighting violent crime is a responsibility we all share. That’s why the FBI has surged agents and other FBI resources to investigate and arrest the worst offenders in a number of cities that have seen a sharp uptick in violent crime.

Operation Legend, which was launched in July of this year, is a coordinated initiative with our federal, state, and local partners. It was first deployed in Kansas City, but has quickly expanded to Chicago, Albuquerque, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Memphis, and St. Louis. The FBI has been working with our partners there to provide intelligence, conduct interviews, collect and process evidence, and provide cellular data analysis and social media exploitation, among other things.

And I’m happy to say that the operation has already produced encouraging results. Working together, our folks have already been able to take hundreds of additional violent offenders off the streets and seize countless unlawfully possessed firearms. Through this work, we’re sending a loud and clear message to gang members and violent criminals that we will deploy our collective strength to ensure the safety and security of our neighborhoods and communities.

Terrorism and Violent Extremists

We also remain focused on the threat of terrorism and violent extremists.

Terrorism remains the FBI’s top priority, though the nature of that threat has evolved significantly since 9/11. Today, the greatest threat we face in the U.S. is from lone actors who radicalize online and look to attack soft, familiar targets with readily available weapons—which limits our chances to detect and stop them before they can act.

This lone actor threat includes two distinct categories.

The first is homegrown violent extremists—people who have been radicalized primarily here in the United States, and who are inspired by foreign terrorist organizations. The second is domestic violent extremists—people who commit violent criminal acts to advance ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, like anti-government bias. Last year, 2019, was the deadliest year for domestic extremist violence since 1995, the year of the Oklahoma City bombing. Within the category of domestic violent extremists, the most lethal activity in recent years has come from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.

On top of that, this year, we’ve seen an alarming spike in violence, including lethal activity, from anti-government and anti-fascist extremists.

But no matter which category of terrorist violence we’re talking about, we’re focused on disruption—on making arrests before extremists can act. Just this year alone, through the hard work and dedication of countless men and women at the FBI, together with our task force officers and our partner agencies, we’ve prevented attacks in Kansas City, Tampa, Cleveland, Oklahoma City, Boston, Phoenix, and other places. And we’ve got to keep relying on our partnerships to stay ahead of this evolving threat.

COVID-Related Frauds and Crimes

It’s hard to discuss the current threat picture without also mentioning the impact of COVID. Scammers never let a crisis go to waste, and this pandemic is no exception.

So far, the FBI has opened about 750 COVID fraud cases. Those cover everything from fake PPE and test kits to charity fraud scams to hoarding and price-gouging of critical supplies. We’re also now seeing scams targeting unemployment insurance and the Paycheck Protection Program.

On top of all that, COVID has introduced new cyber vulnerabilities. Our kids are now online so much more. And the more they’re online, the more vulnerable they are to predators—and we’ve seen a significant uptick in reports of online child sexual exploitation over the past few months.

Which leads me into my next topic, lawful access.

Lawful Access

The challenge of maintaining lawful access to electronic evidence cuts across all these threats.

The good news is, we’ve begun seeing tangible action on this issue—both the House and the Senate have introduced lawful access bills this year. But we still have a long road ahead of us. Some in the tech industry are doing their best to convince people that we in law enforcement are somehow trying to weaken encryption so we can directly access data ourselves. And that’s simply not true.

We’re asking providers to maintain built-in, secure access that they control themselves, to the data on their own platforms and devices—so that they can respond to lawful warrants and court orders. We’re not asking for a key for ourselves or for the means to get into their data without one.

We must have strong cybersecurity, one of our top priorities, but we cannot—and need not—sacrifice real-world, flesh-and-blood security. And we certainly can’t leave it to a few profit-seeking companies to unilaterally dictate that sacrifice to something like 325 million American people. This is a societal issue.

To make progress on this issue, we’ve got to do a better job of talking about all the crimes we increasingly can’t solve—and the victims we increasingly can’t help—because of default, warrant-proof encryption. We’ve got to keep sounding the alarm on this issue, because the problem isn’t just persistent. It’s growing, all the time.

The Way Forward—Partnerships and Listening

Whatever the threat or challenge, we’ve got to stay focused on what we know to be true—that strong partnerships are critical to everything we do. And we need to lean on those partnerships more than ever, especially when times are tough.

I’ve urged our leaders in FBI field offices to stay in close contact with you, and to let you know we’re here to help however we can. Because we know it takes all of us working together to keep our communities safe.

Which brings me back to what I said earlier about the importance of listening. As law enforcement leaders, we’ve got to listen to our fellow citizens, to our colleagues, to our partners, and to our community leaders.

In recent months, I’ve touched base with many of you and have learned about what you’re seeing lately in your own communities. The FBI remains ready to stand with you, shoulder to shoulder, in your efforts to protect the American people.

I’ve also spoken with leaders from a range of faith-based organizations and national advocacy groups, and I’m going to continue to do so. It’s important that we understand their concerns and are able to reassure them that our departments are determined to uphold our mission and serve all the communities we’re sworn to protect. That dialogue is essential to our success.

Of course, all the talk in the world won’t matter if our actions don’t back it up. That’s why, when we’re worried about the perceptions of law enforcement, we’ve got to stay focused on our brand where it matters most.

I’m talking about the opinions of the communities you serve—the people who actually interact with your department or your agency through your work, the people who truly count on you. Because those are informed opinions—based not on some comment or sound bite, but on direct personal experience and our engagement with members of the community. Those opinions are built one case at a time, one investigation at a time, one traffic stop at a time, one 911 call at a time, one compassionate act at a time.

We know that law enforcement isn’t perfect. But we cannot let those few officers who fail to uphold our values define who we are. Because the vast, vast majority of our folks go about their work, day in and day out, with the goal of serving and protecting all people equally—and they succeed, inspiringly, in doing just that.

A lot of people recognize—but we must never take for granted—the countless acts of bravery and heroism demonstrated by law enforcement professionals across this country.

There’s the officer in Bridgeport, Connecticut, who spotted a runaway SUV with no driver and two helpless passengers inside and mustered all his strength to stop the car from jumping a curb and striking a group of teenagers on the sidewalk.

There’s the San Diego K-9 officer who came to the rescue after a suicidal man drove his truck off an oceanside cliff with his twin 2-year-old daughters inside. That officer scaled down the cliff in the dark, using a 100-foot leash he had in his patrol car. Then, using his water survival training from his days as a Marine, he towed the girls and their father to the rocks, where fire rescue personnel could recover them.

Now those examples are extraordinary, and are what many in the public rightly consider synonymous with the best of law enforcement in this country. But what goes unnoticed far too often are the countless acts of compassion and kindness that our folks show to members of our communities every day, acts of thoughtfulness and generosity that go above and beyond the call of duty to help people.

Like the Arkansas officer who took an 8-year-old girl to her school’s daddy-daughter dance after her dad had passed away over the holidays.

Like the Detroit officer who helped a homeless man shave after seeing him struggle because he didn’t have a mirror.

Like the pair of Dallas officers who came across a struggling mother of six kids when responding to a call. They learned the woman and children had fled an abusive husband a few months earlier—but there was literally no furniture in the apartment they’d all fled to. So they collected money from fellow officers to furnish that apartment.

And these acts of kindness don’t just end at our borders. There are the police officers in Calgary, Canada, who had the tough job of notifying a young mother and her four kids that their husband and father had died in a workplace accident. During their visit, the officers learned the kids didn’t have many toys—so members of the force collected gifts and surprised the family last Christmas.

I could go on and on with examples from every department across our country and around the world. Unfortunately, those incidents don’t spread like wildfire on social media or make the headlines on cable news. But that doesn’t mean they don’t make a huge difference. Because every encounter between our officers and the citizens we serve is an opportunity to build upon their trust and support.

So we have to keep working, and listening, and showing people who we really are.

* * *

There was another time, not so long ago, when our nation experienced a lot of what we’re seeing today. A surge in violent crime, public unrest in many of our city streets, dissatisfaction with social conditions, violence against police, and heightened, and in many cases deserved, scrutiny of police procedures.

That was the 1960s and ’70s—a really tough time for law enforcement in our country. But our law enforcement leaders back then didn’t give up; they persevered. And over the following decades, thanks in no small part to their work, our nation drove crime down dramatically. We reclaimed many of our nation’s cities from crime and despair, and created spaces where neighborhoods could thrive, businesses could prosper, and families could feel safe. And we can draw inspiration from some of yesterday’s leaders in addressing the issues we face today.

Let me close with a quick story that I think captures perfectly a lot of what I’ve talked about today.

During a protest march this past June, a 6-year-old African-American child named Dallas Brown and a Houston P.D. officer named Khalil Johns struck up a friendship. When the little boy approached him, Officer Johns knelt down, looked him in the eye, and listened. Afterward, Officer Johns said: “I wanted him to see an officer that looks like him, face-to-face. And to let him know that you are represented in the police department.” Officer Johns also told Dallas: “This uniform doesn’t mean that I’m better than you. This uniform means that I have a duty to protect you.”

For his part, young Dallas said: “I think he was very cool, and he’s my friend.”

Moments like that matter. They don’t solve every problem we face in law enforcement today. They don’t erase every past instance of police officers abusing their power and eroding public trust. But they do make a real difference. They remind the people we serve—and remind all of us, too—why we signed up for these jobs in the first place. Why our people put on the badge and face the storm every day.

Despite all the criticism, the aggravations, the danger, and the stress, we signed up for these jobs to serve justice and to help people. And there’s no better work than that.

Thank you for choosing that work. Thank you for your leadership, and your support of the 37,000 men and women of the FBI. And thanks for listening to me today.