Cash and items totalling almost $18 million were seized by police in WA in 2024, new figures have revealed, with more than $5 million of that already being pumped back into the community via safety initiatives.
The Australian Federal Police’s Western Command led multiple high-profile investigations into cybercrime, child exploitation and drug trafficking leading to the arrest of 162 people from January to December.
Michael Clapsis faces nine alleged cyber-crime charges.
Part of those investigations included looking at possible proceeds of crime, with an entire taskforce created to analyse WA residents who cannot legally justify their assets.
In 2024 alone, more than $5.3 million was confiscated and allocated to the Attorney General’s community safety initiatives.
Another $12.3 million has also been seized but is still being investigated to see whether it will be forfeited to the state.
Along with investigating the proceeds of crime, one of the AFP’s key priorities is to protect children from exploitation and abuse
A three-year investigation came to fruition this year when a Perth man was given a 17-year sentence for the sextortion of 286 people, including 180 children.
Another man was charged after pretending to be a teenage social media celebrity to befriend girls before blackmailing them into performing sex acts on camera. In that case, there were about 112 victims of the 25-year-old, including a 13-year-old girl in the United States.
In May, the AFP’s cybercrime team charged a Perth man for the first time with creating an ‘evil twin’ WIFI network on a plane to glean personal information from people connected to it.
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