Teen boys increasingly targeted in online ‘sextortion’ schemes: FBIBy Danielle Wallace, Fox News
April 28, 2022
The FBI is warning parents that teen boys are increasingly being targeted in online “sextortion” schemes.
FBI Boston Division’s Child Exploitation-Human Trafficking Task Force warned parents and caregivers on Wednesday about an increasing number of reports of adults posing as young girls who coerce young boys through social media to produce sexual images and videos and then extort them for money.
In the so-called “sextortion” schemes that have recently become more prevalent, adult predators pretending to be young girls contact young males usually between the ages of 14 and 17 online over any platform used to meet and communicate, such as a game, app or social media accounts. They then use “deception and manipulation” to convince the young males to engage in explicit activity over video, which is then secretly recorded by the predator, the FBI says. The predator then reveals they have made the recording and threatens that those videos will be posted online if the victim doesn’t pay up.
In 2021, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received over 18,000 sextortion-related complaints, with losses over $13.6 million. That figure reflects all types of sextortion reported, not just the scheme targeting teenage boys.
The FBI notes that the embarrassment children feel from falling victim to these schemes often prevents them from coming forward to a parent, teacher, caregiver or law enforcement, so sextortion offenders could have hundreds of undiscovered victims around the world. Parents and caregivers are encouraged to have conversations with their children early on regarding their online activity.
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Source:
https://nypost.com/2022/04/28/teen-boys-increasingly-targeted-in-online-sextortion-schemes-fbi/
