The Storefront Falls, the Factory Stands: Feds Seize Two Deepfake Abuse Sites

For the first time, US authorities have used a new federal forfeiture power to seize the domains of two sites built around non-consensual deepfake imagery. It is a genuine enforcement milestone — and a clear illustration of why enforcement alone cannot close this threat.

What Happened

On June 16, 2026, the US Departments of Justice and Homeland Security seized two domains, CFake.com and SOCFake.com, used to host non-consensual intimate deepfake imagery. The seizures were carried out under the TAKE IT DOWN Act, signed in May 2025 — the first US federal statute criminalising the publication of non-consensual intimate imagery, including AI-generated forgeries.

The law imposes penalties of up to two years' imprisonment, gives covered platforms 48 hours to remove flagged content, and grants the forfeiture powers the DOJ has now used. According to the seizure warrants, the forged material depicted public figures across politics, media, sport, and entertainment, as well as private individuals.
The action did not stop at the domains. It sits alongside a widening enforcement wave: US prosecutors recently arrested two men under the same Act for publishing thousands of deepfake images of both prominent and private women; a separate Ohio case this spring resulted in a guilty plea spanning cyberstalking, child sexual abuse material, and digital forgeries; in France, a defendant faces trial in Paris on July 7 over non-consensual sexual deepfakes; and Australian authorities last year secured a substantial fine against an offender who targeted prominent women.

Why It Matters

This is the moment the TAKE IT DOWN Act stopped being a statute on paper and became an operational tool — domains seized, individuals charged, across multiple jurisdictions at once. For victims, that is real progress: a federal mechanism now exists where, two years ago, there was mostly silence.
But the same week's reporting makes the limit explicit. Seizing a distribution point removes a storefront. It does not remove the AI models used to generate the material, the anonymous hosting downstream, or the demand that brings visitors in the first place.