Some victims of sextortion have tragically ended their lives
Criminals are selling guides teaching scammers how to carry out ‘sextortion’ to trick victims into sending nudes.
The guides are allegedly being sold on social media, showing scammers how to blackmail others, BBC News reports.
They show step-by-step how to pose as young women online and lure a victim into sending sexually explicit material before blackmailing them to extort money.
This is known as sextortion, a type of blackmail that has seen a rise in recent years.
It led to the National Crime Agency issuing an unprecedented warning to all schools across the UK about the dangers of sextortion as children and teens are now targeted.
At least three children in the UK have ended their lives as a result of sextortion, the crime agency said.
Victim of sextortion
A mother of a 14-year-old found out her teenage son had fallen victim to a sextortion gang this year.
Lucy described the ‘shell-shock’ after her son received intimidating messages from scammers – despite not sending any pictures to them.
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While he had not sent any images himself, the criminals mocked up a compromising picture and in a text threatened to share it, the BBC reports.
Lucy said: ‘It was a message, basically saying, ‘don’t shut us down. If you don’t send us money in 24 hours, we’ll send a picture to all your contacts.
‘He was shell-shocked. And he was literally physically shaking.’
The frightened teen had already paid the blackmailers £100.
After his parents helped him to shut down the account and the phone, he never heard from the blackmailers again.
But Lucy fears what could have happened if he had not opened up to her.
‘If he hadn’t been at home that morning, and I hadn’t been in the kitchen, and if he hadn’t talked to me, I don’t know how it would have played out for him,’ she added.
In December, 16-year-old Murray Dowey, from Dunblane, Perthshire, took his own life hours after being targeted by a sextortion blackmail plot with potential links to Nigeria.
The teenager’s mum Ros Dowey urged young victims not ‘do what Murray did,’ adding that ‘nothing is worth taking your own life.’
‘No matter how terrified and awful you’re feeling at the moment, that will pass and this can be fixed,’ she said.
Ros and Mark Dowey lost their son Murray after the 16-year-old took his own life following sextortion blackmail (Picture: STV)
Sextortion warning
Experts have warned of a sharp rise in children falling victim to sextortion allegedly carried out by gangs based in West Africa, mainly Nigeria, according to the BBC.
Paul Raffile, an intelligence professional and expert on sextortion, said it was a ‘massive threat’ to children and teenagers.
‘Internet scammers over these past two years have found out that they can get very rich very quickly by scamming an untapped market.
‘And that’s teenagers.’
While adults have been affected for years, criminals are now targeting a new group of victims – teenage boys, he warned.
Sextortion
Sextortion is blackmail where criminals threaten to release nude or semi-nude photos of the victim, both real or fake, unless they are paid.
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) found that reports of confirmed child sexual abuse involving sextortion grew in the first six months of 2023 by 257% compared with the whole of 2022.
The IWF hotline investigated 191 reports in the first half of last year – compared with just 30 cases in the 12 months before.
Nine out of ten UK cases dealt with by the IWF in 2023 concerned male victims, the National Crime Agency said.
They trawl social media platforms to find targets, often searching for high schools and youth sports teams to ‘follow’ and ‘friend’ young victims, the expert said.
Now criminals are openly selling guides on how to carry out sextortion, including videos.
Guides found by the BBC explain how to set up untraceable phone numbers, fake social media profiles and use secure payment methods.
One suspected scammer boasted about the number of victims they have blackmailed, while another said a victim paid him ‘every Friday.’
Olamide Shanu, 33, is accused of making £2,000,000 by threatening to publish explicit images of boys.
Shanu, a Nigerian who was arrested in Surrey last year, appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday after an extradition request from the US.
Olamide Shanu (Picture: Central News/Web Collect)
Shanu is wanted in the US on alleged charges of conspiracy to cyberstalk, interstate commutations with intent to commit extortion, cyberstalking, extortion and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Raffile criticised big tech companies for not doing enough to stop sextortion.
He said: ‘This crime has really exploded on Instagram and Snapchat over these past two years…these platforms need to aggressively go after these criminals.’
Snapchat told the BBC it has been ‘ramping up efforts’ to tackle sextortion, including with a reporting option specifically for threats to leak sexual content and in-app education tools for teens.
Instagram’s owner Meta said it also had a ‘dedicated reporting option so people can report anyone threatening to share private images.’
It said teens under 18 get a private Insta account by default when signing up, which hides their followers and following lists and gives stricter default messaging settings.
TikTok told the BBC the platform is designed to be ‘inhospitable for those intent on causing harm to teens and we do not tolerate any content or behaviour promoting sextortion.’
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