Jeremy Mahugh lives by DeliverFund’s unofficial motto: “Our business is crushing evil … and business is good!”

Mahugh is co-founder and SVP of the Dallas-based DeliverFund, which is run by a distributed team of former CIA, Special Ops, and law enforcement personnel. The nonprofit uses open-source intelligence and proprietary software to analyze the activity of human traffickers in the U.S. and help law enforcement take them down.

SOCIAL INNOVATION
Evil Crusher
Jeremy Mahugh

“It’s not ‘Minority Report’ yet,” Mahugh says, referring to the movie’s Precogs and its predictive analytics. “But it’s getting closer.” Mobile technology has caused trafficking to skyrocket. DeliverFund has turned the tables, using that same tech to hunt the traffickers using it. “DeliverFund’s whole goal is to create a Hobson’s choice for the trafficker: they can continue to use internet technologies to conduct business and get caught, or they can stop. Either way, the good guys win,” Mahugh says.

The former Navy SEAL signed the nonprofit’s lease at the old offices of Backpage, one of the largest marketplaces for buying and selling sex before it was busted in 2018. DeliverFund even assisted in taking down traffickers using it. Moving to the space was symbolic, bringing “light to darkness,” Mahugh says.

What’s next? Helping his org establish the International Human Trafficking Analysis Center (IHTAC). “Think of it as a centralized brain for all things related to human trafficking,” he says.

It’s something law enforcement has wanted for years and will be a huge weapon in the fight. Mahugh expects it to “significantly reduce human trafficking as we know it. The IHTAC will be an inflection point in history—history that will be made right here in Dallas.”

Meet the founder

Jeremy Mahugh was featured in Dallas Innovates’ Future 50 in Dallas-Fort Worth in the 2021 edition of our annual magazine. We talk with Mahugh about how DeliverFund stops traffickers, how they’ve been impacted by the pandemic, and the future of the nonprofit. Here’s a takeaway:

On how their technology is like the movie “Minority Report”

The technology we use is a combination of open-source intelligence and proprietary software that we have developed that allows DeliverFund analysts and the law enforcement officers they serve to have a complete picture of the human trafficking terrain in the USA. The development was informed by combining the best human trafficking detectives, counter-terrorism intelligence analysts and collectors, and software engineers we could find and getting them to collaborate on the development of the ultimate software weapon for counter-human trafficking. The “Minority Report” was an analogy to illustrate where we are taking the technology. Our goal is to have the software become predictive, and while we are not quite there yet, our software team gets closer every day.

The proliferation of modern human trafficking was caused by the rapid adoption of mobile, internet-connected technologies. If you overlay smartphone adoption data with the proliferation of modern human trafficking, there is almost a one-to-one correlation, which is interesting. At DeliverFund, we have used the very technologies traffickers use to conduct business against them, and that creates a Hobson’s choice for the trafficker: they can continue to use internet technologies to conduct business and get caught, or they can stop. Either way, the good guys win. This approach is going to change the human trafficking landscape the better, forever.

On COVID-19’s impact

Fortunately, COVID-19 has not impacted how we fight human trafficking. We developed a repeatable, scalable model four years ago, so we are able to accomplish our mission from anywhere even in quarantine. What has been impacted is our fundraising efforts and law enforcement’s ability to respond at the same scale as previous years.

On resilience

We hire the best and brightest we can find from the intelligence, counterterrorism, law enforcement, and business communities who also have the heart for this mission, and the result is resilience is baked into our culture. The DeliverFund team deals with heavy, emotional, and mentally taxing information every day, but the importance of the hope we bring to victims of this evil is motivating. Knowing that we are helping to bring justice is truly motivating.

On what’s next for DeliverFund

We are very excited about the build-out of the International Human Trafficking Analysis Center (iHTAC) at our headquarters here in Dallas. The iHATC will be the central, all-source intelligence center for human trafficking collection and analysis globally. Think of it as a centralized brain for all things related to human trafficking. Law enforcement has been asking us for this for years, and it is desperately needed. It will be the next weapon yielded in the counter-human trafficking fight, and it will significantly reduce human trafficking as we know it. The iHTAC will be an inflection point in history; history that will be made right here in Dallas.

A version of this story was originally published in Dallas Innovates 2021: The Resilience Issue.

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Our fourth annual magazine, Dallas Innovates 2021: The Resilience Issue, highlights Dallas-Fort Worth as a hub for innovation. The collective strength of the innovation ecosystem and intellectual capital in Dallas-Fort Worth is a force to be reckoned with.