The Louisiana Attorney General’s Cyber Crime Unit (CCU) investigates, interdicts, and prosecutes crimes involving computers and other forms of electronics. These cases often involve the production, distribution, or possession of sexual abuse images and videos of children.

As a statewide agency, the Attorney General’s Office has the ability to dedicate the resources and personnel to fight these crimes that local agencies often cannot. Utilizing advanced technologies and the expertise of full-time criminal prosecutors, investigators, and computer forensic examiners, the CCU is uniquely positioned to find and stop many crimes against children.

The CCU conducts proactive and reactive investigations and aids in other investigations throughout the State. Within Louisiana’s first statewide computer forensics laboratory, CCU agents conduct undercover investigations online, analyze electronic devices seized from suspects, and recover data relevant to the crimes. Using cutting-edge equipment, CCU agents also attempt to locate and rescue juvenile victims of child sexual exploitation.

The CCU serves as the lead agency for the Louisiana Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force. The Louisiana ICAC Task Force is primarily funded by the United States Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and was created in response to the increasing number of children and teens using the Internet, the abundance of child pornography, and the heightened online activity of predators seeking unsupervised contact with underage children.

The Louisiana ICAC Task Force is housed in the Attorney General’s Office and allows the CCU to work with and support over 150 local, state, and federal partners across Louisiana. This support encompasses forensic and investigative components, training and technical assistance, victim services, and community education. CCU agents regularly address schools, PTAs, local organizations, and other groups of concerned citizens in an effort to educate parents, teachers, and children about the dangers of Internet crimes.

Crimes involving computers can be broken down into three categories based on the use of the computer:

• Computers can be weapons

  Computers can be used as weapons by hackers and crackers in order to attack important government functions such as hacking into the computer used by a clerk of court and destroying electronic records of vital data (such as mortgage and conveyance records).

• Computers can be instrumentalities of the crime

  Computers can be instrumentalities of more traditional crimes such as when images of child pornography are distributed over the Internet.

• Computers can be repositories of evidence

  Computers can also simply store a list of drug transactions for a narcotics dealer, making the computers repositories of evidence in a traditional crime.