FBI: Sextortion of teenagers is growing problem

Teenagers, primarily boys, are being lured with the offer of money by “females” in return for sending sexually explicit photos and videos over social media, only to discover that they become victims in an elaborate extortion scheme seeking more money, according to the FBI in Pittsburgh.

The FBI said Monday it is receiving an increasing number of reports of adults posing as young girls and using deception to lure the boys — ages 14 to 17 — through social media to provide sexual images and videos. The “girls” then demand money to keep them from disseminating the images online to family and friends.

“We’ve had two to three in the last week. It is more with the boys than the girls,” said Catherine Policicchio, an FBI spokeswoman in Pittsburgh.

The contact to procure what law enforcement describes as child abuse/sexual material may be made through a game, an app or social media account. The scammer secretly records the photos or videos then tells the victims they made the recordings and starts the extortion.

“These are not the traditional child predators that are just looking for more explicit images. They’re looking for money,” FBI Pittsburgh Special Agent in Charge Mike Nordwall said.

The number of “sextortion” cases has increased since last year, Policicchio said, and the bureau is seeing the scams being run out of Nigeria.

In 11 Western Pennsylvania counties, there were 112 people between the ages of 20 and 60 who were victimized last year by sextortion and paid $35,098 to keep the scammers from distributing the images, according to FBI statistics. There were just 10 people younger than 20 who were victimized for $920. Among those victims older than 60, 20 paid $3,030 to extorters, the FBI said. The gender breakdown of the victims was not available, Policicchio said.

By comparison, during the pandemic lockdown in 2020, the FBI received reports of 158 cases and $62,250 lost. This year, there have been 59 victims of sextortion in the region, and they paid a total of $19,824, Policicchio said. No one has been arrested in the recent spate of cases, she said.

The FBI estimates that on a nationwide scale, its Internet Crime Complaint Center has received more than 18,000 sextortion-related complaints, with losses of more than $13.6 million last year.

The extorters could be sentenced up to life in prison if found guilty of child abuse/sexual material, the FBI said.

One of the challenges in finding the extorters, the FBI said, is that victims often feel embarrassed by what they have done, which may prevent them from reporting the incident to help law enforcement identify the perpetrators.

”We want kids to know that if someone they’ve met on social media starts asking for videos and photos and eventually money, that person should be reported,” Nordwall said.