"THIS DOMAIN HAS BEEN SEIZED by the United States Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) New Jersey Field Office pursuant to a seizure warrant issued by the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey..." reads the banner now displayed on CFAKE.com and SOCFAKE.com.
Seizure notice and DOJ action
The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it has seized the domains CFAKE.com and SOCFAKE.com after a federal judge found probable cause they were being used to violate the TAKE IT DOWN Act. According to the announcement, the sites were taken offline on Thursday by the DOJ and Homeland Security Investigations; the seizure banners identify the action as part of a coordinated operation involving the United States, Italy, and France.
Allegations against CFAKE.com and SOCFAKE.com
The DOJ says the sites hosted sexually explicit digital images and videos — described in the announcement as deepfakes — that depicted politicians, celebrities, athletes, musicians and members of royalty from multiple countries. The probable cause affidavit supporting the seizure warrants, the DOJ said, alleges the digital forgeries were made to appear as sexual images of famous women, including politicians, first ladies of multiple countries, royalty, journalists, television presenters, athletes, entertainers, and others.
The announcement also restates a straightforward working definition: a deepfake is AI-generated or AI-manipulated media that depicts a person saying, doing, or appearing in ways that never occurred. The DOJ noted deepfakes can be created from existing photos, videos, or audio recordings and are commonly used to generate nonconsensual nude content as well as for impersonation scams, phishing and cryptocurrency fraud.
International investigation: Italy alerts U.S., France makes arrest
U.S. law enforcement says the investigation began after Italy's Postal and Cybersecurity Police alerted American authorities. Italian media reports cited by the DOJ say investigators opened an inquiry in October 2025 after complaints about AI-generated sexually explicit images depicting women from politics, sports, entertainment and other public-facing roles. Italian authorities obtained a court order blocking access to the sites within Italy while continuing their probe.
The DOJ said evidence gathered by U.S. law enforcement was later shared with French authorities. French prosecutors and investigators executed an inquiry that led to the arrest of a suspect in Nice on June 10 and to the seizure of cryptocurrency allegedly connected to the operation.
The TAKE IT DOWN Act (47 U.S.C. § 223) and enforcement
The domain seizure was carried out under the TAKE IT DOWN Act (47 U.S.C. § 223), a bipartisan law signed in May 2025 that makes it a federal crime to publish sexually explicit altered images depicting identifiable individuals without their consent. The statute also requires online platforms to remove reported intimate images and deepfakes within 48 hours of receiving a valid request from a victim. The DOJ's seizure banner explicitly cites violations of that statute and warns that violators are subject to fines, imprisonment, or both.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche called the seizures "a significant victory in the fight against deepfake pornography" and said the law, which the DOJ release notes was championed by First Lady Melania Trump as part of her "Be Best" initiative, "gives us the tools we need to combat the abuse and exploitation of women and children through these fabricated images." The department also noted the statute had previously been used against an Ohio man who pleaded guilty to charges related to creating AI-generated sexually explicit images; the CFAKE and SOCFAKE seizures appear to be the first publicly announced use of the law to target websites alleged to distribute deepfake pornography.
What this means for technologists, policymakers, and victims
- Technologists and platform operators: the 48-hour removal requirement in 47 U.S.C. § 223 creates a concrete timeline for incident response and content takedown once a valid request is received, and the DOJ action shows authorities will pursue domain seizures as an enforcement tool.
- Policymakers and prosecutors: the coordinated operation involving HSI, the French National Police, the Paris Prosecutor’s Office, Italy’s Polizia di Stato - Postal and Cybersecurity Police, the DOJ's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey demonstrates cross-border evidence-sharing and joint investigative steps that produced an arrest and seizure of cryptocurrency.
- Victims and public-facing professionals: the law criminalizes the nonconsensual publication of intimate imagery and establishes a statutory takedown duty for platforms; the DOJ statement highlights the statute's use against creators of AI-generated sexually explicit images and now, publicly at least, as a basis to seize domains distributing such material.
The CFAKE and SOCFAKE seizures put enforcement muscle behind recent statutory changes: prosecutors have shown they can move from complaint to cross-border cooperation to domain seizure and arrest. Whether this action will deter operators of similar sites, change platform behavior worldwide, or prompt additional legal fights over jurisdiction and evidence-sharing remains to be seen — but the agencies named on the seizure banner have signaled they are treating deepfake distribution as a criminal priority.
