This episode of FBI: International was absolutely exceptional, dealing with an ever present issue in today's world of children and young adults being victimized online, often through social media. The acting and how they dealt with the reality of this situation was so brilliantly written and portrayed in such a real and sensitive way. Dick Wolf and the FBI: International team, you really outdid yourselves on this one!
The episode opens on a dark room where a man is typing to multiple young women on his screen. He is telling each of them if they do not send him a video, he will release pictures to everyone they know. Each one is upset and distressed, not understanding why he is doing this to them. One of them threatens that she will call the police and he tells her to go ahead, because he is not in the USA and they cannot touch him. He then gets up from his screen and walks over and opens the curtains to reveal the skyline of Budapest. This was an especially eerie touch to this scene, and demostrates the real threat of online predators and how they can be anywhere, including in your own backyard.
Forrester and Raines enter and tell them they have a case. Cybercrimes out of the Washington Field Office (WFO) is asking for there help with a major case of sexual extortion. The suspect is posing online as Chet Manning, who has been chatting with young girls on various social media platforms across the USA, and encouraging them to download the Signal app to communicate. This app is notoriously difficult to trace and monitor. Once he got one compromising photo from them, he would exort them for increasingly more graphic photos and videos, threatening to distribute what they sent to their family and friends if they did not comply. In five cases, he did distribute the images as he had threatened. So far they have found 30 teenage girls and counting across the USA that he has victimized, some as young as twelve years old. He had mentioned an online name to Charlotte Weston, a 17 year old girl in Tallahasse, Florida. She alerted authorities yesterday, and authorities were able to track the screen name to a dark web chat room in Budapest. Forrester says he is currently active, and that they need to identify the suspect and bring him in. Forrester, Vo and Raines head over to the local police to see what they have, and Garretson stays with Kellett to link up with WFO to set up communications with their team.
At the precinct, Scott links up with Lt. Laszlo Lakatos, and asks him about the Mennokid screenname and what he knows about this person being active in Budapest. He tells him that he is actively extorting young women and they cannot wait. This interaction showed Forrester and that he was developping some friendly relationships with local authorities, which is so crucial to his successul work with the FBI. Lakatos sends one of his officers, Detective Beatrix Toth, with them to review the information they may have. Toth tells them they do not have a lot of information because unfortunately cyber crimes are not a high priority with Hungarian authorities, especially when the victims are in another country. Raines and Vo review the logs, and see that the Mennokid screen name is very active in several rooms for revenge porn and trading underage sexual imagery. Vo finds another screen name, BlakPenj, which belongs to someone who has been arrested named Andor Molnar. They see that he is completing community service locally. Vo and Raines go to speak with him, and say they want to know who Mennokid is, but he says he does not know him, but tells them what he knows about him. He says the chat rooms he uses are invitation only with military grade encryption. He also tells them he has at least ten or fifteen different aliases online that he uses to get the photos from the American girls.
Megan runs down the other aliases they got for Mennokid and there are over 200 victims in the USA. Suddenly Charlotte's mother Mimi Weston calls, and tells Scott not to leave her alone, and that she is in a relationship with Mennokid/Chet, that they are not getting the whole story and that they do not have permission to speak with her. Scott asks Jamie if she has any idea what that was about and she says no, but she will find out. Charlotte tells them that her mother is crazy, and would she really be in an FBI office trying to catch this guy if she was in love with him. Scott asks why her mother thinks she is, and she tells them that when she was in a very dark place with this situation, she was in a World History class, where they were learning about the hostage crisis in Peru, and learning about Lima syndrome, where the captors develop sympathy for their victims. She said because she knew wherever this person was that they were likely a lonely loser, and she figured the only way to possibly catch him would be to lure him into communicating with her more, so she played it up, playing into his ego. Her mother went on to her computer, read the messages and thought they were real. Jamie tells her that her mother has forbidden them to work with her any further and Charlotte says she looked it up and that she is considered an adult in Hungary. Scott tells her that she is correct but that they are a branch of the FBI and governed by US laws. Charlotte begs to be able to help them, and says they do not understand what he took from her. Scott says that she can give them access to all the communication she has had with him, and she tells him that it is embarassing because it looks like she likes him but she does not. She gives them access to her laptop. This scene really showed the bravery and intelligence that Charlotte had to try to assist authorities to catch Chet and definitely made the viewer feel for her and want them to catch this criminal even more.
Raines is following Mennokid in a dark web chat room where he says the topic is grim. Vo comes to tell them they sent the text, he has opened it already, and they identify a location across town, and the team minus Kellett goes to move in while Jamie waits with Charlotte, and tells her it worked and they are heading to the IP address right now. The team moves in to the location of the IP address, which turns out to be a bar. They find a woman on a laptop, and it turns out she is the bar owner, and that she just took over the bar and her friend did the computer system for her, who according to Raines, did it horribly. Mennokid took control of the network over Wifi, and has been routing all his internet traffic through the bar's IP address. Megan asks if she might be involved but Vo says she gave her full access to her laptop and she is clean. Scott says their search radius is now much smaller.
Megan asks to speak with Scott and tells him that the cameras were hacked, and Raines tells him that he was able to identify the address of the source of the hack, and it is three blocks from the tavern. They go to the apartment and a woman answers the door. She tells them she lives there with her 23 year old son. They search the apartment, and break down the door to the son's room, but he had set a motion sensored trap that encrypted everything from his system when they triggered the kill switch. His mother tells them he spends all his time online, but he is a good boy, and they tell her that is not the case. They identify Mennokid or Chet Manning as Deko Horvath, and his mother is not able to get ahold of his cell phone. Scott holds off sending out his photo to all local authorities so that they can hopefully catch him with something incriminating on his phone. They discuss having Charlotte send him another video so that they can get the malware on his phone. Raines says he was probably notified on his phone that they triggered the kill switch and asks why he would open another text from her, and Vo says it is because he is in love with her.
They get a location when he opens the video, and they go to the bus station and capture him getting ready to board a bus to London, where he thought Charlotte was. A chase ensues and Garretson and Forrester run him down and capture him. They are able to obtain his phone before he could delete anything, and he had kept all correspondence and images from Charlotte on his phone. Raines says it is enough to cook him to a crisp. Forrester and Kellett go in to speak with him, and tell him he will be extradited to the USA, but Horvath says that he has an enticing offer for them.
They go to speak with Charlotte and let her know they caught him. She asks if he confessed and they tell her that he has not confessed yet, but he has told them he knows the identities of the other men in his chat rooms, who are extorting other girls. He wants a lesser sentence and to serve his sentence in Hungary for providing this information. Charlotte asks how much time he will get and Jamie says probably not as much as if they took him back to the USA to charge him with what he did to her, but she says if they can bring justice to other girls, then it is not even up for debate. But she asks to speak to him face to face. This once again shows the immense bravery of this young character. The emotion felt raw and real and really encompassed the victimization that online predators create.
Team members then disperse to the 3 locations in Budapest and arrest the men who Horvath identified. Charlotte prepares to leave and the team thanks her for her help and Jamie gives her a hoodie that says Budapest on it to remind her when the rest of her life began. Jamie tells her about the FBI witness advocacy program and tells her that she could be a big help to others who have been through what she has, and Charlotte says she is 100% in to help others heal.
The team says they could use a drink and Raines says he knows just the place, and takes them back to the bar from earlier. Raines flirts with the owner and offers to redo her computer and security system and she accepts. Megan also asks Scott about how to get in with Jamie to become her roommate and when he asks how she knows about their past, it is revealed that Vo cannot keep gossip to herself. There is definitely so much more that the team has to learn about Vo. Jamie gets a call from Charlotte and she tells her she did not get a chance to say thank you and wanted her to know how much she appreciated all they did. Jamie tells her she wishes her sister had been as strong as her and she needs to know how much she has done for girls like her. Charlotte says that means alot and Jamie tells her to take care of herself.
This episode I am sure will hit home for many viewers as victims of cybercrimes, especially young ones, are unfortunately a growing reality as our world explodes online. The brilliant acting and realism of this case was an excellent choice by the Wolf team, and a very strong start to the season. It also had some fun moments as we get to know more about the new and older members of the team. I cannot wait to see what the FBI: International writers come up with for next week. How about you?
