\u201cHey there!\u201d messaged Savannah, someone 16-year-old Charlie had never met before, but looked cute in her profile picture. She had long blonde hair, blue eyes, and an adorable smile, so he decided to DM with her on Instagram. Soon their flirty exchanges grew heated, and Savannah was sending Charlie explicit photos. When she asked him for some in return, he thought nothing of taking a quick snap of himself naked and sending it her way.<\/p>\n
Within seconds, \u201cSavannah\u201d morphed from vixen to vice, threatening Charlie with posting his nude picture all over social media\u2014unless he sent $500. Then she gave Charlie three days to get her the money, otherwise she\u2019d share the compromising photos with his friends and family.<\/p>\n
While the above scene is fictional, it\u2019s indicative of what the FBI and Department of Homeland Security agree is the fastest-growing cybercrime of the last three years. It\u2019s called financially motivated sextortion, or financial sextortion, and its victims are mainly teenage boys between the ages of 14 and 17.<\/p>\n
Financial sextortion happens when adult criminals create fake accounts posing as young women on social media, gaming platforms, or messaging apps, and coerce victims into sending explicit photos. Scammers then threaten victims into sending payment, usually in the form of cryptocurrency, wire transfer, or gift cards, otherwise they\u2019ll post the images online for all to see.<\/p>\n
In an emerging trend, some sextortion scammers are now using artificial intelligence to manipulate photos from victims’ social media accounts into sexually graphic content. The predators then threaten to share the content on public forums and pornographic websites, as well as report victims to the police, claiming they\u2019re in possession of child pornography. Demands for money immediately follow.<\/p>\n
In 2023 alone, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC<\/a>) received 26,718 reports of financial sextortion of minors, more than double the 10,731 incidents reported in 2022. Sadly, these figures are likely far understated, since they rely on kids or their parents calling in the crime. A January 2024 threat intelligence report from Network Contagion Research Institute<\/a> (NCRI) found children in the United States, Canada, and Australia are being targeted at an alarming rate, with a massive 1,000 percent surge in financial sextortion incidents in the last 18 months.<\/p>\n To illustrate how quickly the digital landscape has changed, a 2018 national survey<\/a> found just 5 percent of US teens reported being victims of sextortion. Fast forward to June 2023, and 51 percent of Generation Z respondents<\/a> said they or their friends were catfished in sextortion scams\u201447 percent in the last three months.<\/p>\n Financial sextortion has been linked to scammers in West Africa, particularly Nigeria and the Ivory Coast, as well as the Philippines. However, NCRI notes virtually all sextortion scams targeting minors can be directly linked to a distributed West African gang known as the Yahoo Boys. The Yahoo Boys mainly go after English-speaking minors and young adults on Instagram, Snapchat, and Wizz, an online dating platform for teens. They\u2019re the original Nigerian Princes, but have changed tactics in recent years to elder fraud, romance scams, fake job scams\u2014and now the sexual extortion of children for profit.<\/p>\n NCRI credits the tenfold increase in financial sextortion cases directly to the Yahoo Boys\u2019 distribution of instructional videos and scripts on TikTok, YouTube, and Scribd, which are encouraging and enabling other threat actors to engage in financial sextortion as well. The videos have been viewed more than half a million times, and comments are filled with cybercriminals eager to download the scripts and get started.<\/p>\n The sextortion guides provide step-by-step instructions on how to create convincing fake social media profiles and \u201cbomb\u201d high schools, universities, and youth sports teams. The Yahoo Boys use this term to describe friending\/following as many kids in a school or other location as possible to convince victims they could be an unknown classmate or peer from a nearby town.<\/p>\n While the payment amounts requested by the Yahoo Boys vary, they can range from as little as a couple hundred dollars to a few thousand. But predators employ ruthless tactics to intimidate their victims into paying, which can inflict lasting trauma and immense distress on children. Offenders often continue demanding more money after receiving the initial sum and may release victims\u2019 sexually explicit images regardless of whether or not they were paid.<\/p>\n Indeed, the financial fallout may not be as daunting as the millions demanded by ransomware actors, but the emotional cost to teenage boys can be devastating. Anxiety. Humiliation. Shame. Despair. Feeling completely alone and afraid to ask for help. According to the FBI, financial sextortion has even been linked to fatalities. To their knowledge, at least 20 teens between January 2021 and July 2023<\/a> committed suicide when faced with the threat of nude photos that could ruin their lives.<\/p>\n Parents of teenage boys\u2014or all teens for that matter\u2014should have a conversation with their child about the pitfalls of financial sextortion. Remind them to be selective about what they share online and who they connect with, and if a stranger reaches out to them demanding payment or sexually explicit images, they should speak to a trusted adult before sending anything, be it money, photos, or more messages. In fact, open lines of communication can be the difference between life or death, so if your child doesn\u2019t feel comfortable going to you, ask that they bookmark this article or one of the references listed below.<\/p>\n If you or your child are a victim of financially motivated sextortion, the most important advice to remember is this: You are not alone. You are not in trouble. Your child should not be in trouble. There is a way forward after this.<\/p>\n There are several resources you or your child can access to report the crime to law enforcement, speak to a caring counselor or peer, and request that harmful images be taken down. Here\u2019s what we suggest:<\/p>\n For more information and resources, visit the FBI\u2019s page on financially motivated sextortion<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe Yahoo Boys<\/h2>\n
What to do if you or your child is financially sextorted<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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