Inside the Mississippi Attorney General's lab that tracks online crime

Mississippi's Attorney General opened the doors of the state's Cyber Crime Lab on Tuesday. Investigators showed how they chase online predators, card skimmers and scams. They also said criminals are using AI more and more, and that some harmful apps have slipped onto the main phone app stores.

Skimmers at the checkout

A skimmer is a device that secretly steals bank card details. Investigator Nick Sprowles held up one recovered from a Walmart checkout terminal. It slides over the real card reader and looks normal to the machine. Nobody notices, he said. A storage module holds the stolen data, and a criminal with an Android device can connect remotely nearby and pull it. Skimmers can sit on a terminal for months.

Hidden micro-cameras can record people typing their PINs. Attorney General Lynn Fitch said a single skimmer can enable up to $1 million in fraud. Her office has seized about 50 of them in recent years. Sprowles said these operations often involve foreign nationals, including organized Romanian groups.

Cracking locked devices

Investigators also showed how they get into password-protected and encrypted electronics seized under search warrants. They use custom hardware built in-house. On a locked computer donated from a Secret Service case, investigator Jamie White said the process takes about 45 seconds to decrypt the password and bypass security features.

Finding the devices comes first. Suspects hide memory cards, thumb drives and hard drives in walls, clothing and furniture. The office uses TracE, a 3-year-old Labrador trained to smell the chemical compounds in electronic storage media. Her finds have helped in cases from financial fraud to child sexual abuse material.

The AI problem

Charlie Rubisoff, deputy director of the Cyber Crime Division, said criminals are using AI more often. He said the situation changes almost daily. He pointed to apps that can create explicit images of people without their consent, including child sexual abuse material. Several of these so-called nudification apps got past app store filters. They appeared on Google and Apple stores with age ratings as low as 4 and older.

What to do

Rubisoff said technology alone cannot fix this and called it a community effort. He wants families to make sure children's devices are monitored responsibly. For shoppers and business owners, the skimmer cases are a reminder to look over card readers for signs of tampering.

• Check card readers for anything loose, bulky or out of place before you pay.
• Talk with children about who they chat with online.
• Ask kids which AI tools and apps they use, and keep an eye on their devices.

What is not known

The material does not say how many people have been charged in these cases. It also does not say how the app store ratings will be fixed. Because skimmers are built to look normal, a quick glance may not catch every one.