Mallory Pace
Words by Mallory Pace
We know the Internet is a dangerous place, but it’s not just cyberbullying we need to fear anymore.
A new type of sexual assault is on the rise, one that takes place behind a screen, pushing victims into a helpless corner as they’re blackmailed and isolated. The abuse is circled around scare tactics and is dependent on young and vulnerable children who will be too afraid to ask for help, forcing them to comply with what’s demanded of them. It’s a crime that children and parents need to be aware of to see the signs, know how to ask for help and start to open up communication should this happen to you or a loved one.
Sextortion is a form of blackmail where someone threatens to distribute another person’s private or sensitive materials if they do not give them what they ask for. In some cases, that could be videos or images of a sexual nature, sexual favors or most commonly, money, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In Dec. 2022, the FBI, in partnership with Homeland Security Investigations, issued a national public safety alert about the increase of sextortion cases. In 2022 alone, law enforcement received over 7,000 reports of financial sextortion of minors, resulting in more than 3,000 victims, according to an FBI press release. More than a dozen resulted in a suicide because of it.
Cases of sextortion vary, but commonly, perpetrators will make contact with a victim via social media or online gaming and discourse sites and take on a persona. Most likely they’ll appear as someone the same age as the victim and attempt to form a relationship and earn their trust until they have convinced them to send explicit material of themself and then use that as blackmail. In other cases, a perpetrator might make contact and immediately begin threatening a victim, in hopes they’ll take the bait. The threats can feel so real, even if the offender doesn’t provide proof, that they may just assume to take this person seriously in case they really do have their private material. The scammer might demand more photos of the victim or else they’ll release the ones they have to friends, family or onto social media.
Chief Francis Mackesy of the University of North Florida Police Department has seen only a handful of cases related to sextortion on campus, most of which follow suit with what is most commonly seen. Predominantly, a student meets someone online, thinks there’s a relationship forming, some trust is built and the student sends an explicit image or something of that nature. Then the blackmail begins.
“We’ve had a couple of students conned out of a few thousand dollars,” Mackesy said. “In anybody’s world, that’s a lot of money, but in a student’s world… that’s a lot of money.”
Mackesy became the director of the University of North Florida’s police and public safety department after retiring from his 32-year career with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. In most cases he’s seen, the victim had notified the university police once they realized something was wrong. However, he explained, the ones who do pay the demanded ransom may find themselves out of luck.
“The ones that actually pay the money, they’re kind of out of luck because when we try to backtrack to that IP address, it’s been bounced all over the world 100, 200 times,” Mackesy said. “There’s no way we will ever find out where that came from.”
Sextortion is a very difficult crime to solve, he explained, especially with the more sophisticated scammers who know what they’re doing and how to get away with it. He recalled one case from a few years ago related to online scamming and their investigation led them back to over 700 different IP addresses, making it virtually impossible to track down the scammer. That’s part of what makes this crime so dangerous — the Internet is vast, it’s forever. Identities and people aren’t who they claim to be, and if you trust the wrong person, the consequences can be dire.
Chris Hughes, hotline director for the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), explained there could be several reasons for why extortion cases are on the rise. For one, children’s lives are moving more and more online either for education, socialization or hobbies, which increases their exposure to online predators. Further, the rise of financial sextortion may indicate that more organized criminals have seen an opportunity to take advantage of vulnerable children for financial gain, Hughes said via email. IWF is a UK-based charity and the largest hotline in Europe dedicated to finding and removing child sexual abuse material from the internet.
“Anyone can be affected by sexual extortion online, and it can take many different forms,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be financial blackmail. Offenders can also demand more sexually explicit images from their victims in exchange for not sharing the original captured image. Anyone could be an offender — this includes peers who bully others into sharing explicit images.”
Victim demographics and statistics
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) is the nation’s largest and most influential child protection organization. Through their CyberTipline, they have been tracking the rise of sextortion reports since 2013, and cases have only gone up since. In 2023, the tipline received 186,819 reports of online enticement, the category that includes sextortion. The number of online enticement reports increased by 323% between 2021 and 2023, according to NCMEC’s website.
From Oct. 2021 to Mar. 2023, the FBI received over 13,000 reports of online financial sextortion, a large portion of which were male victims between 14 to 17 years old, but any child can be a victim, an FBI press release stated.
One major difference between the age of a targeted victim appears to boil down to whether an offender is seeking a financial ransom or sexual gratification. In the cases where a predator is targeting someone especially young, perhaps 10 to 15 years old, they may not be looking for a buyout because they know someone that young won’t pay up. Instead, it may be more about pedophilia or the explicit content itself. On the other hand, those a little bit older may be targeted for money.
In 2015, the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire partnered with Thorn, an anti-human trafficking organization and conducted a survey to better understand the crime of sextortion. Over 1,600 victims, ages 18-25, responded to the survey, although 47% said their sextortion experience occurred before they were 18. Approximately 60% reported knowing the person making the threats in real life. In these cases, the perpetrator frequently sought to pressure the victim into returning to a relationship or aiming to humiliate them, the report reads. The other 40% only knew the person threatening them online. The survey found that 45% of perpetrators carried out their threats, meanwhile 1 in 3 victims reported they did not talk about their abuse with anyone. They conducted another survey in 2017, opening up the ages to 13-25 years old and found that nearly 1 in 4 victims were 13 or younger when they experienced sextortion.
Sextortion isn’t a new crime, but the dramatic uptick law enforcement has seen in recent years is alarming. According to IWF’s website, in the first six months of 2023, the charity received more reports involving sextortion than in the entirety of 2022. Their reports show that older teenagers, ages 14-17, are the most at risk, especially boys.
“Any child that has access to a device with a web-enabled camera could be a victim of sexual abuse. Modern technology allows sexual predators into your home,” Hughes said. “Parents and carers should talk openly to children about the risks online and take steps to discuss what safety measures their children are using on their devices.”
Cases of sextortion
A podcast episode by Crime Junkie detailed two cases of sextortion victims, highlighting the dangers of this type of crime and the importance of awareness. In December 2022, 16-year-old Walker Montgomery was found dead in his bedroom after taking his own life. As the police began investigating, they found Instagram messages between Walker and another user sharing explicit videos of each other, until they started blackmailing Walker and demanding $1,000. The FBI is brought into the case, who discovered that the sextortion that resulted in Walker’s death occurred over just three or four hours the night he died by suicide.
The user appeared as an attractive girl similar in age to Walker and after chatting for a bit, the user convinced Walker to video chat and perform mutual sex acts. The “girl” was actually a criminal group in Nigeria using a fake video and secretly recording the video call. Once it was over, they immediately began demanding the money or else they would share the video with all of his Instagram contacts. He begs and pleads but they don’t let up; he tells them he’s going to end his own life and they tell him to go ahead because his life’s already over, the podcast said. The sextortionists never shared the video with anyone.
In a disturbingly similar case, 17-year-old Jordan DeMay died by suicide as a result of sextortion. Like Walker, Jordan was communicating with who he believed to be a girl about his age over Instagram when the conversation turned into requests for explicit images, according to an article from the Associated Press. After sharing images, the other user began demanding money or Jordan’s images would be shared publicly. When Jordan explained he couldn’t provide payment, the perpetrator pushed him to kill himself. Similar to Walker’s case, the user pretending to be a young girl turned out to be two brothers from Nigeria, according to the FBI. They are currently being tried in a court of law but have pleaded not guilty.
Part of what prevents this crime from being reported is the fear of victim blaming. Admitting a situation like this is imaginably terrifying, but what the blackmailer is doing is worse, and the quicker victims ask for help, the quicker it can be resolved. Parents can support their child without blaming them, Hughes said. He advised parents to engage in peaceful and honest conversation about this crime and reassure their child that there will be no punishment.
“Children are not at fault. They are innocent victims of callous and vindictive sexual predators,” Hughes said.
AI and Sextortion
We all know what artificial intelligence can do, and we’re starting to see its limitless boundaries, even its role in committing crimes. Advanced AI technologies are making it easier for criminals to extort victims by creating or changing innocent photos of victims to appear as fake sexual material. By taking a normal picture from someone’s social media account, virtually anyone can use an AI program to make it appear as something it’s not and then use that to blackmail victims.
In late January, obscene, AI-generated images of Taylor Swift began circulating on X (formerly Twitter). She is reportedly preparing to take legal action against distributors of these deep-fake images, but this case highlights the very real danger of nonconsensual, AI-generated images and the need for legal preventative action. In response to the incident with Swift, a group of senators introduced a bill that would criminalize the spread of nonconsensual, sexual images generated by AI, according to an article from “The Guardian.” Currently, there are no federal laws against disseminating such content. Although creating such content is technically legal, blackmailing and sextortion is not.
Seeing Signs & Asking for Help
Whether you’re a parent or child, it’s crucial to be aware of signs that indicate a sextortion crime may be occurring. During the 2022 Human Trafficking Summit, the Department of Children and Families provided several tips for parents and guardians on protecting their children from becoming victims of sextortion. First, be aware of your child’s online activity. That might not sound easy, but monitor their social media use and clarify that once something is sent on the Internet, it never goes away.
In this digital age, online relationships are increasingly common. According to Thorn’s 2022 report on online grooming, they found that 1 in 3 minors reported meeting some of their closest friends online. Similarly, 1 in 7 minors reported sharing something they’ve never shared before with an online friend. Telling young people not to engage in online relationships is like teaching abstinence — it’s not a practical solution in the world we live in today. But like having sex, there are consequences to be aware of. If you’re going to engage in an online relationship and potentially exchange sensitive materials, you must also prepare for the consequences. Education and awareness is at the forefront of preventing this crime from happening to you. The NCMEC website lists a few red flags to look out for.
Those involved in the sextortion of children often:
- approach a child on social media after using it to learn about the child’s interests, friends, school, family, etc.
- move quickly and ask for nudes immediately after following or friending a child on a social media platform.
- intentionally move their communications with the child from one online platform to another (e.g., moving from social media to private video chat or messaging apps).
They also list common tactics offenders may use to coerce a child, including reciprocation — “I’ll show you, if you show me.” They may pose as a modeling agency to obtain sexual images or falsely promise things of value like gift cards, money and more. The organization also advises people to get help before deciding to comply with the blackmailer and reminds people that complying rarely stops the blackmail. Report the account and block the suspect, but do not delete your profile or messages because they could be used to help track down the perpetrator.
Parents and children alike, don’t assume something like this wouldn’t or couldn’t happen to you or your child. Although certain demographics appear more targeted, anyone active on social media is at risk. That’s where opening up a two-way street communication comes in. It’s crucial to relay to children how to ask for help and that they should do so even in uncomfortable situations like these. The FBI website’s section on sextortion offers parents and guardians useful talking points to use with their children and young people. It also lists several tips for young people to consider on how to protect themselves and their friends, including advice like be suspicious, be in the know and be willing to ask for help. That information, and more, can be found here: bit.ly/sextortionFBI.
NCMEC has several resources that can try to help you take down online explicit material of yourself. If you don’t have a trusted adult to ask for help, visit cybertipline.org for help with the process or call 800-THE-LOST for support. INHOPE is a global network of 54 member hotlines focused on fighting against child sexual abuse material. Their website lists multiple resources, tiplines and other useful information on how to report a sextortion case. There are dozens of organizations and resources available to victims of online sex abuse. The University of North Florida alone offers many different avenues for those seeking help and there are crisis centers and international online groups dedicated to helping victims.
“There’s not a single crime out there worth taking your life,” Mackesy said. “Just take a deep breath, reach out to the professionals, let them point [victims] in the right direction. The resources are out there that can help them through the crisis. Any victims advocate or police officer, they’ll all do everything within their power to get that person through the crisis.”
Until further solutions are strictly implemented, like government regulations on social media for protecting users, education and awareness is the first priority. Be wary and skeptical of who you choose to talk to online. Assume the worst. But if you, your child, a friend or a loved one ever finds themself in this situation, know you’re not alone, far from it.
Words by Mallory Pace
We know the Internet is a dangerous place, but it’s not just cyberbullying we need to fear anymore.
A new type of sexual assault is on the rise, one that takes place behind a screen, pushing victims into a helpless corner as they’re blackmailed and isolated. The abuse is circled around scare tactics and is dependent on young and vulnerable children who will be too afraid to ask for help, forcing them to comply with what’s demanded of them. It’s a crime that children and parents need to be aware of to see the signs, know how to ask for help and start to open up communication should this happen to you or a loved one.
Sextortion is a form of blackmail where someone threatens to distribute another person’s private or sensitive materials if they do not give them what they ask for. In some cases, that could be videos or images of a sexual nature, sexual favors or most commonly, money, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In Dec. 2022, the FBI, in partnership with Homeland Security Investigations, issued a national public safety alert about the increase of sextortion cases. In 2022 alone, law enforcement received over 7,000 reports of financial sextortion of minors, resulting in more than 3,000 victims, according to an FBI press release. More than a dozen resulted in a suicide because of it.
Cases of sextortion vary, but commonly, perpetrators will make contact with a victim via social media or online gaming and discourse sites and take on a persona. Most likely they’ll appear as someone the same age as the victim and attempt to form a relationship and earn their trust until they have convinced them to send explicit material of themself and then use that as blackmail. In other cases, a perpetrator might make contact and immediately begin threatening a victim, in hopes they’ll take the bait. The threats can feel so real, even if the offender doesn’t provide proof, that they may just assume to take this person seriously in case they really do have their private material. The scammer might demand more photos of the victim or else they’ll release the ones they have to friends, family or onto social media.
Chief Francis Mackesy of the University of North Florida Police Department has seen only a handful of cases related to sextortion on campus, most of which follow suit with what is most commonly seen. Predominantly, a student meets someone online, thinks there’s a relationship forming, some trust is built and the student sends an explicit image or something of that nature. Then the blackmail begins.
“We’ve had a couple of students conned out of a few thousand dollars,” Mackesy said. “In anybody’s world, that’s a lot of money, but in a student’s world… that’s a lot of money.”
Mackesy became the director of the University of North Florida’s police and public safety department after retiring from his 32-year career with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. In most cases he’s seen, the victim had notified the university police once they realized something was wrong. However, he explained, the ones who do pay the demanded ransom may find themselves out of luck.
“The ones that actually pay the money, they’re kind of out of luck because when we try to backtrack to that IP address, it’s been bounced all over the world 100, 200 times,” Mackesy said. “There’s no way we will ever find out where that came from.”
Sextortion is a very difficult crime to solve, he explained, especially with the more sophisticated scammers who know what they’re doing and how to get away with it. He recalled one case from a few years ago related to online scamming and their investigation led them back to over 700 different IP addresses, making it virtually impossible to track down the scammer. That’s part of what makes this crime so dangerous — the Internet is vast, it’s forever. Identities and people aren’t who they claim to be, and if you trust the wrong person, the consequences can be dire.
Chris Hughes, hotline director for the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), explained there could be several reasons for why extortion cases are on the rise. For one, children’s lives are moving more and more online either for education, socialization or hobbies, which increases their exposure to online predators. Further, the rise of financial sextortion may indicate that more organized criminals have seen an opportunity to take advantage of vulnerable children for financial gain, Hughes said via email. IWF is a UK-based charity and the largest hotline in Europe dedicated to finding and removing child sexual abuse material from the internet.
“Anyone can be affected by sexual extortion online, and it can take many different forms,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be financial blackmail. Offenders can also demand more sexually explicit images from their victims in exchange for not sharing the original captured image. Anyone could be an offender — this includes peers who bully others into sharing explicit images.”
Victim demographics and statistics
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) is the nation’s largest and most influential child protection organization. Through their CyberTipline, they have been tracking the rise of sextortion reports since 2013, and cases have only gone up since. In 2023, the tipline received 186,819 reports of online enticement, the category that includes sextortion. The number of online enticement reports increased by 323% between 2021 and 2023, according to NCMEC’s website.
From Oct. 2021 to Mar. 2023, the FBI received over 13,000 reports of online financial sextortion, a large portion of which were male victims between 14 to 17 years old, but any child can be a victim, an FBI press release stated.
One major difference between the age of a targeted victim appears to boil down to whether an offender is seeking a financial ransom or sexual gratification. In the cases where a predator is targeting someone especially young, perhaps 10 to 15 years old, they may not be looking for a buyout because they know someone that young won’t pay up. Instead, it may be more about pedophilia or the explicit content itself. On the other hand, those a little bit older may be targeted for money.
In 2015, the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire partnered with Thorn, an anti-human trafficking organization and conducted a survey to better understand the crime of sextortion. Over 1,600 victims, ages 18-25, responded to the survey, although 47% said their sextortion experience occurred before they were 18. Approximately 60% reported knowing the person making the threats in real life. In these cases, the perpetrator frequently sought to pressure the victim into returning to a relationship or aiming to humiliate them, the report reads. The other 40% only knew the person threatening them online. The survey found that 45% of perpetrators carried out their threats, meanwhile 1 in 3 victims reported they did not talk about their abuse with anyone. They conducted another survey in 2017, opening up the ages to 13-25 years old and found that nearly 1 in 4 victims were 13 or younger when they experienced sextortion.
Sextortion isn’t a new crime, but the dramatic uptick law enforcement has seen in recent years is alarming. According to IWF’s website, in the first six months of 2023, the charity received more reports involving sextortion than in the entirety of 2022. Their reports show that older teenagers, ages 14-17, are the most at risk, especially boys.
“Any child that has access to a device with a web-enabled camera could be a victim of sexual abuse. Modern technology allows sexual predators into your home,” Hughes said. “Parents and carers should talk openly to children about the risks online and take steps to discuss what safety measures their children are using on their devices.”
Cases of sextortion
A podcast episode by Crime Junkie detailed two cases of sextortion victims, highlighting the dangers of this type of crime and the importance of awareness. In December 2022, 16-year-old Walker Montgomery was found dead in his bedroom after taking his own life. As the police began investigating, they found Instagram messages between Walker and another user sharing explicit videos of each other, until they started blackmailing Walker and demanding $1,000. The FBI is brought into the case, who discovered that the sextortion that resulted in Walker’s death occurred over just three or four hours the night he died by suicide.
The user appeared as an attractive girl similar in age to Walker and after chatting for a bit, the user convinced Walker to video chat and perform mutual sex acts. The “girl” was actually a criminal group in Nigeria using a fake video and secretly recording the video call. Once it was over, they immediately began demanding the money or else they would share the video with all of his Instagram contacts. He begs and pleads but they don’t let up; he tells them he’s going to end his own life and they tell him to go ahead because his life’s already over, the podcast said. The sextortionists never shared the video with anyone.
In a disturbingly similar case, 17-year-old Jordan DeMay died by suicide as a result of sextortion. Like Walker, Jordan was communicating with who he believed to be a girl about his age over Instagram when the conversation turned into requests for explicit images, according to an article from the Associated Press. After sharing images, the other user began demanding money or Jordan’s images would be shared publicly. When Jordan explained he couldn’t provide payment, the perpetrator pushed him to kill himself. Similar to Walker’s case, the user pretending to be a young girl turned out to be two brothers from Nigeria, according to the FBI. They are currently being tried in a court of law but have pleaded not guilty.
Part of what prevents this crime from being reported is the fear of victim blaming. Admitting a situation like this is imaginably terrifying, but what the blackmailer is doing is worse, and the quicker victims ask for help, the quicker it can be resolved. Parents can support their child without blaming them, Hughes said. He advised parents to engage in peaceful and honest conversation about this crime and reassure their child that there will be no punishment.
“Children are not at fault. They are innocent victims of callous and vindictive sexual predators,” Hughes said.
AI and Sextortion
We all know what artificial intelligence can do, and we’re starting to see its limitless boundaries, even its role in committing crimes. Advanced AI technologies are making it easier for criminals to extort victims by creating or changing innocent photos of victims to appear as fake sexual material. By taking a normal picture from someone’s social media account, virtually anyone can use an AI program to make it appear as something it’s not and then use that to blackmail victims.
In late January, obscene, AI-generated images of Taylor Swift began circulating on X (formerly Twitter). She is reportedly preparing to take legal action against distributors of these deep-fake images, but this case highlights the very real danger of nonconsensual, AI-generated images and the need for legal preventative action. In response to the incident with Swift, a group of senators introduced a bill that would criminalize the spread of nonconsensual, sexual images generated by AI, according to an article from “The Guardian.” Currently, there are no federal laws against disseminating such content. Although creating such content is technically legal, blackmailing and sextortion is not.
Seeing Signs & Asking for Help
Whether you’re a parent or child, it’s crucial to be aware of signs that indicate a sextortion crime may be occurring. During the 2022 Human Trafficking Summit, the Department of Children and Families provided several tips for parents and guardians on protecting their children from becoming victims of sextortion. First, be aware of your child’s online activity. That might not sound easy, but monitor their social media use and clarify that once something is sent on the Internet, it never goes away.
In this digital age, online relationships are increasingly common. According to Thorn’s 2022 report on online grooming, they found that 1 in 3 minors reported meeting some of their closest friends online. Similarly, 1 in 7 minors reported sharing something they’ve never shared before with an online friend. Telling young people not to engage in online relationships is like teaching abstinence — it’s not a practical solution in the world we live in today. But like having sex, there are consequences to be aware of. If you’re going to engage in an online relationship and potentially exchange sensitive materials, you must also prepare for the consequences. Education and awareness is at the forefront of preventing this crime from happening to you. The NCMEC website lists a few red flags to look out for.
Those involved in the sextortion of children often:
- approach a child on social media after using it to learn about the child’s interests, friends, school, family, etc.
- move quickly and ask for nudes immediately after following or friending a child on a social media platform.
- intentionally move their communications with the child from one online platform to another (e.g., moving from social media to private video chat or messaging apps).
They also list common tactics offenders may use to coerce a child, including reciprocation — “I’ll show you, if you show me.” They may pose as a modeling agency to obtain sexual images or falsely promise things of value like gift cards, money and more. The organization also advises people to get help before deciding to comply with the blackmailer and reminds people that complying rarely stops the blackmail. Report the account and block the suspect, but do not delete your profile or messages because they could be used to help track down the perpetrator.
Parents and children alike, don’t assume something like this wouldn’t or couldn’t happen to you or your child. Although certain demographics appear more targeted, anyone active on social media is at risk. That’s where opening up a two-way street communication comes in. It’s crucial to relay to children how to ask for help and that they should do so even in uncomfortable situations like these. The FBI website’s section on sextortion offers parents and guardians useful talking points to use with their children and young people. It also lists several tips for young people to consider on how to protect themselves and their friends, including advice like be suspicious, be in the know and be willing to ask for help. That information, and more, can be found here: bit.ly/sextortionFBI.
NCMEC has several resources that can try to help you take down online explicit material of yourself. If you don’t have a trusted adult to ask for help, visit cybertipline.org for help with the process or call 800-THE-LOST for support. INHOPE is a global network of 54 member hotlines focused on fighting against child sexual abuse material. Their website lists multiple resources, tiplines and other useful information on how to report a sextortion case. There are dozens of organizations and resources available to victims of online sex abuse. The University of North Florida alone offers many different avenues for those seeking help and there are crisis centers and international online groups dedicated to helping victims.
“There’s not a single crime out there worth taking your life,” Mackesy said. “Just take a deep breath, reach out to the professionals, let them point [victims] in the right direction. The resources are out there that can help them through the crisis. Any victims advocate or police officer, they’ll all do everything within their power to get that person through the crisis.”
Until further solutions are strictly implemented, like government regulations on social media for protecting users, education and awareness is the first priority. Be wary and skeptical of who you choose to talk to online. Assume the worst. But if you, your child, a friend or a loved one ever finds themself in this situation, know you’re not alone, far from it.
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