A woman who kept Yazidi women and children as slaves in Raqqa, Syria, during the rule of the terror group ISIS was on Tuesday jailed by a Swedish court on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and gross war crimes.

Six children and three women from the ethnic and religious Yazidi group were kept imprisoned by the woman for months in 2015, the Stockholm District Court said in a statement. The woman was not named by the court.

While being held as slaves, the victims were forced to participate in Islamic religious practices, forbidden to observe their own religion and culture, and ordered to perform domestic chores, the court said. Some of the victims were also “assaulted and molested,” it added.

ISIS considered Raqqa the capital of its self-proclaimed “caliphate,” seizing the city in 2014. Raqqa’s national hospital and stadium were turned into ISIS headquarters, and public executions were carried out in the city’s main square.

ISIS killed and enslaved hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Yazidis, capturing the women and children and murdering the men.

The group victimized by the woman sentenced on Tuesday were taken captive in August 2014, Stockholm District Court said, after ISIS carried out attacks on Yazidi villages in Northern Iraq’s Sinjar district. Their male relatives were killed in the attacks, the court said.

Before being imprisoned by the woman, the victims were kept as slaves by different male ISIS members, living “in very meagre conditions without food and clean water,” according to the court. The women were “subjected to systematic rape” by the male ISIS members, it added.

The victims were then moved to the woman’s home, where they were held and abused for up to five months, the court said. After this, she helped transfer the victims to be enslaved by other ISIS members.

Some of the victims were freed via smugglers a couple of months after they left the woman’s home, the court said, but three of the children did not become free until years later. One young woman has not been found, it added.

“The crimes do not only constitute an exceptionally serious violation of the life and integrity of specific individuals, but also of fundamental human values and humanity,” the court said.

“To exercise the powers attaching to right of ownership over another human being is a tremendous violation of the integrity of that person, as it deprives the person of their human dignity,” it continued.

Marwan Ouarab is an unlikely hero.

The convicted con artist, once almost sent to prison for selling fake concert tickets, has found a new calling: saving scam victims from their online predators. For many, he’s their last hope of recovering stolen savings or cherished treasures.

Anne – who asked that only her first name be used for privacy reasons – is a 53-year-old French woman who was swindled out of €830,000 ($860,000) by fraudsters who convinced her she was dating Hollywood actor Brad Pitt for over a year and a half. The criminals bombarded her with fake photos and deepfake videos purportedly showing the real actor talking to Anne and asking her for money.

The videos sent to Anne are slick and – at least at first glance – look convincing, only betrayed by the sometimes-bizarre audio and unnatural eye movements of the AI-generated fake.

Contacted by TF1, a French broadcaster that was reporting on Anne’s story, Ouarab used open-source intelligence (OSINT) techniques to track down her scammers in Nigeria.

To track down those accused of defrauding Anne, Ouarab relied on a tried-and-true tactic: taking advantage of the alleged scammers’ greediness by sending them a booby-trapped link disguised as a legitimate banking platform.

The art of exploiting a scammer’s mistakes

“Basically, (OSINT) is the art of finding a person using very little information,” explained Ouarab. With just a phone number or an e-mail address, the 29-year-old can unmask online scammers, finding their real name, age, and location.

“To collect their data, I just had to wait for them to click on the link, and give me their consent,” Ouarab explained. This method ensures that the data obtained can be lawfully passed to the police. It’s not only reformed scammers who can master these tricks. “Anyone can use these tools,” he emphasized. “It’s really basic-level OSINT I used for this case.”

While Anne’s story seems extraordinary, for Ouarab and the FindMyScammer team, it’s sadly all too common.

In 2024 alone, consumers lost more than $1 trillion to scams globally, according to an international survey by the Global Anti-Scam Alliance.

With the French government’s international AI Action Summit taking place in Paris this week, the rise of sophisticated deepfakes and the urgent need for better detection methods are expected to be on the agenda.

French President Emmanuel Macron says he is personally committed to ensuring the summit’s success and numerous world leaders are participating, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, China’s Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing and US Vice President JD Vance.

‘Anyone can fall victim to these scams’

Falling prey to an online scam doesn’t require sophisticated AI-generated videos and deepfakes. “Anyone can fall victim to these scams,” warned Ouarab. He speaks from personal experience: A few years ago, he says his aunt lost 80,000 euros’ ($82,880) worth of Cartier jewellery while trying to sell it on Leboncoin.fr, a French online marketplace. Desperate, she asked Ouarab if he could help track down the scammers.

“I learned all my skills on the dark side. I realized they could also be put to good use,” he recalled. Ouarab says he managed to track down the swindler and scare him into returning the stolen jewellery to his aunt.

Until only six years ago, Ouarab himself was the one scamming people. He would sell fake concert tickets by printing out working barcodes onto blank tickets that he stole from his local shop.

The scam worked for a while, but the police eventually caught on. At the age of 25, he was convicted of fraud, handed a 10-month suspended prison sentence, and ordered to pay 11,000 euros in compensation to the victims.

He decided to turn his life around and, in 2023, officially launched FindMyScammer.com, which he claims is the first company devoted to tracking down online scammers, although other companies such as Forward Global offer a similar service in the United States. What began as a one-man operation has grown into a thriving 14-person business. It’s a success that is set to continue as online scams figures soar.

In the United States alone, reported losses tied to so-called “pig butchering” scams – a blend of “romance” and financial investment fraud – skyrocketed from $907 million in 2020 to a staggering $2.9 billion by November 2023, according to the FBI.

“Over time, the number of victims will only keep rising,” said Ouarab, who says his company receives between 100 and 150 new scam-related requests for help every day.

“I was totally helpless. When I went to the police to file a complaint, they made me understand that there was nothing they could do for me,” Luca said.

In 2022, Luca met “Zara” on Tinder, and the two quickly began an online relationship, sending text messages and making video calls. They never met in person, as “Zara” claimed to work in finance in London and Luca was in Paris.

Four months into their relationship, she told him she was making money investing on a crypto-investment platform and suggested he give it a try.

Luca first invested 10,000 euros ($10,400) and seemed to double his earnings. He then invested 40,000 euros and, after two months, his virtual wallet was worth 100,000 euros. When he wanted to withdraw some of his money, he was asked to pay 17,000 euros ($17,700), he said. “Zara” assured him that this was a normal procedure for paying taxes on profits made. Luca paid; he never saw any of the money or “Zara” again.

For a fee of 2,500 euros ($2,600), Ouarab identified “Zara,” Luca’s accused scammer, and traced her to Dubai, where she is allegedly part of a larger fraud ring, according to Ouarab. With this information, Luca was able to demand his bank reimburse nearly half of his losses and prompted an official investigation into his case.

Banks have certain obligations to clients. According to Louis Audibert, director of the investigation and dispute department at Forward Global, “if you transfer money to someone, the bank has to make sure that the name of the bank account holder matches the number of the bank account.” In Anne’s case, he said, this means that they had an obligation “to verify that the bank account was really held by Brad Pitt.”

They also have an obligation of prevention. “If I, as someone who earns a salary in France, start wiring large amounts of money abroad, the bank should flag those transactions because they are irregular,” said Audibert.

Combating prostitution networks

While not every case will result in a success story, FindMyScammer.com investigates a wide range of scams. From “romance” scams and “pig butchering” to blackmail over intimate photos and financial fraud, the work of the company now extends beyond individual clients.

Corporations are hiring Ouarab and his team to test their security by attempting to defraud them. Even governments and public institutions, such as the French governmental center for child welfare, collaborate with FindMyScammer.com to combat underage prostitution networks, he said.

“We work to identify the leaders of these prostitution networks. It’s been highly effective,” said Ouarab, visibly proud of his company’s broader impact.

Tracking down crooks comes with its own risks. Ouarab and his team have received numerous threats, which is why the identities of all employees, except Ouarab’s, are kept secret. He himself takes care to conceal where he lives, having been forced to move several times because of safety concerns.

“I have to be very careful, but I know it’s for a good cause,” he said. “I’ve been a crook before, and I deeply regret it.

“If this is the price I have to pay to redeem myself, then so be it.”

The so-called land question has been a decades-long dilemma for South Africa.

Apartheid, dismantled in the 1990s, left a deep-seeded legacy of land inequality after centuries of policies pushed non-White South Africans off the land to the benefit of White people. An act in 1913 limited Black ownership to just 7% of the land, later revised to 13%.

Now, more than 100 years later, Black people make up 81% of South Africa’s population of 63 million, yet only own 4% of private land, according to a government land audit conducted in 2017.

What’s the government’s plan to right the wrongs?

A long-debated expropriation act signed by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa last month seeks to right some of the wrongs of apartheid by allowing the government to take land and redistribute it.

In some circumstances, expropriation is allowed without compensation, but only where it is “just and equitable and in the public interest.” However, no seizures of private property have taken place.

But the controversial law has brought some of South Africa’s long-standing racial tensions and inequalities to the forefront, and now it’s been seized on by United States President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, who claim it discriminates against White farmers.

Musk, born in South Africa and now tasked with slashing US public spending, has accused Ramaphosa’s coalition government, led by the African National Congress (ANC) party, of having “openly racist ownership laws.”

Musk’s stance has been denounced by some White South Africans.

Bloemfontein resident David Van Wyk accused the billionaire of “cozying up to the extreme right-wing in the country,” which he described as “defenders of White privilege.”

“For Trump to create the impression that White people in South Africa are victims is nonsense. We (White South Africans) have incomes 10 to 20 times higher than the majority of (Black) people in South Africa,” he said, adding that “the majority of South African Black people still own nothing in the country of their ancestors.”

Van Wyk said the Expropriation Act was driven by the need to address land inequalities in the country.

Others, however, argue that the legislation attempts to do so “in a very clumsy manner,” according to Henk Smith, an attorney at a community-based organization, the Land Access Movement of South Africa (LAMOSA).

$440 million in US aid cut off

In an executive order issued Friday, Trump revoked all aid for South Africa, saying the purpose was to hit back at their government’s “actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners,” namely White Afrikaners.

He also used the order to condemn the country’s stance against Israel and its war in Gaza.

Trump’s order specified that the US “shall not provide aid or assistance to South Africa” through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) or any other executive department or agency.

That means the $440 million that South Africa receives in US assistance – most going to the health sector – was immediately halted.

Trump suspended nearly all US foreign aid on his first day in office, and he has taken steps to dismantle USAID, which means that many South African charities, health programs and HIV clinics have already taken a hit.

“We are concerned about the potential impact of the decision by the United States government to suspend some of its funding for HIV and TB (tuberculosis) programs in African countries for 90 days. Now this funding that we get accounts for about 17% of our country’s HIV spend,” Ramaphosa told lawmakers Thursday, before the executive order, when further cuts to aid were only a threat.

“We will not be deterred. We are, as South Africans, a resilient people, and we will not be bullied,” Ramaphosa said.

Days later, he scrambled to send a delegation to Washington to negotiate with the Trump administration before the war of words went any further.

It’s what’s not explicitly stated in the executive order that is worrying many South Africans.

Fears are mounting that the Trump administration could remove the country’s eligibility from the African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA), a trade act that enhances market access to the US for qualifying Sub-Saharan African nations.

Removal from the trade act, which is up for renewal this year, would be a serious blow to South Africa’s agricultural industry, especially citrus farmers, and the automotive industry.

‘Disinformation’ about land seizures

A spokesperson for South Africa’s Department of International Affairs has said that the misrepresentation of the land act “fuels unwarranted fears” about the targeting of White citizens.

AgriSA, a trade organization for South African farmers, has also denounced claims of land seizures as “disinformation.”

“The unexpected signing of the Expropriation Act on 23 January 2025 has sparked political turmoil and unnecessary tension within the agri-food system. This has been exacerbated by disinformation regarding the Act’s intent, impacting negatively on the investment climate for South African agriculture,” AgriSA chief executive Johann Kotzé said.

“To be clear no seizures or confiscations of private property have taken place. Nor has any land been expropriated without compensation. Isolated cases of land grabs and trespassing have been dealt with,” Kotzé added.

Meanwhile, the Solidarity Movement, a network of Afrikaner community institutions that says it represents about 600,000 members, has said it condemns “the many race laws that make us second class citizens,” including the Expropriation Act and is critical of the ANC’s foreign policy. But it doesn’t believe land grabs are taking place.

“We want to put on record the following: We did not accuse the government of large-scale race-based land grabs, or distribute false information in this regard,” the movement said in a statement. “We did not and will not ask for sanctions against South Africa, or that funds for vulnerable people be cut off by the US government.”

Nonetheless, Kallie Kriel, the leader of right-wing lobbying group AfriForum, which is part of the Solidarity Movement, said that Trump was correct to claim certain sectors of South African society are being treated “very badly.” “I think that is true even though people might deny it,” Kriel told Reuters.

For years, AfriForum has claimed, against evidence, that there is possible ethnic cleansing and a “large-scale killing” of White farmers. Their interview with Fox News attracted a tweet from Trump in 2018, when he first weighed in on the issue.