FBI warns ‘sextortion’ cases targeting teens are on rise

FBI officials issued a warning Thursday following an increase in “sextortion” reports of teenage boys being targeted online by suspects who entice them to share explicit content and then later extort money from the victims, officials said.

Authorities say suspects pose as young girls online via social media platforms and convince victims to produce sexual images and videos, according to statements released by the federal investigators. The victims typically range from 14 to 17 years old.

In other instances, victims are encouraged to engage in explicit activity over video, and the suspect secretly records the acts, FBI officials said. The suspects later attempt to extort money from victims by threatening to post the content online.

Scammers ask for payment via cash apps and even with gift cards, said Special Agent Barbara Smith, who supervises the child exploitation and human trafficking task force at the FBI Washington Field Office. But even after some victims pay, they may continue to be extorted.

Smith said that similar extortion schemes targeting men and boys have operated for years. But in the past six months, reports to the FBI from the region including Washington, D.C., and northern Virginia increased from one report a month to two or three each week, she said in an interview Thursday.

“This has been going on for several years; what’s new is the frequency, and more children are falling victim to this scam,” Smith said. “These financially motivated sextortion schemes that capture children are actually overshadowing the traditional child predator, sextortion schemes that they have.”

Investigators think that the suspected scammers are abroad, and offenders may have hundreds of victims worldwide.

“We recognize victims may feel embarrassed and thus hesitant to come forward and report these incidents,” said Wayne Jacobs, special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office’s criminal/cyber division. “The most effective way to disrupt these criminals is through awareness, education and having important discussions with your children about their online safety.”

Smith’s task force is involved because juveniles are producing pornographic images that can later be spread through underground networks across the internet.

Victims are being asked to come forward so agents can upload the illegal images to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children database to track them in case they appear in other investigations, Smith said.

Agency officials suggest parents limit who has access to social media accounts, block or ignore messages from strangers online, and be suspicious of people their children meet in an online game or app and then ask to start talking to them on a different platform.