Paying a price for naked selfies

Kids caught in sextortion

Police from three countries are working to “shut down” nearly 500 online groomers operating sextortion stings targeting Australian teens.

The Australian Federal Police has expanded its bilateral partnership with Britain to include French agents, after identifying 450 perpetrators from December to February blackmailing youngsters – mainly male – for money.

Working with criminal gangs, the offenders coerce Australians on social networks including Facebook, TikTok and Instagram into sending naked images of themselves, before seeking ramsons of between $50 and $1000.

Officers from Operation Huntsman, a special AFP unit set up to tackle financial sextortion, have already shut down more than 1000 Australian bank, financial services and digital currency accounts operated by grooming gangs.

More than eight Australian teens a day are being stung, according to the Australian Centre To Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE). About 94 per cent of victims are boys.

“There has been an alarming spike in numbers of victims of sexploitation in Australia and around the world,” AFP detective Superintendent Stephen Jay, the senior officer for London, said.

“With the help of British, French and crime agencies in other countries we share intelligence to target the perpetrators manipulating Australian children and shut down their means of operation.

“We are specifically targeting the financial structures of these groups and looking at Australian and international arrests.”

ACCCE commander Helen Schneider last week met with representatives from Britain’s lead crime agency the National Crime Agency (NCA) and the French police’s online child exploitation investigation unit to ramp up collaborative efforts.

AFP in the United Kingdom and the NCA already share intelligence from their tech platforms on online child sex offenders.

“The ACCCE is working with domestic and international partners to identify and stop offshore criminal syndicates profiting from Australian children, with rapid initial action to stop the flow of money from Australian victims reaching criminal syndicates,” Det Supt Jay said.

“This combination of organised financial crime and child sexual exploitation presents a worrying threat …

“Offenders will coerce a victim into self-generating child abuse material, which they then threaten to share unless their demands for money are met – and sometimes they can get between $50 and $1000 and multiple payments.

“If the child refuses to share self-imagery, the crime syndicates can generate false naked images using the child’s face.”

In England, nearly 19,000 minors were sexually groomed in the past year.

And in America, at least 12 child suicides were directly attributed to international sextortion in 2022.