Financial “sextortion” schemes have surged in recent years with offenders appearing to primarily target teenage boys through Instagram and other social media platforms, threatening victims with compromising imagery in exchange for cash, a new report found.
The report, released jointly by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and technology nonprofit Thorn on Monday, analyzed more than 15 million reports made to the NCMEC’s hotline from 2020 to 2023. It detailed dangerous trends in sextortion, including financial sextortion, which the NCMEC called a “growing crisis impacting children around the world.”
The report found that sextortion incidents have significantly climbed in recent years with reports of online enticement increasing by 82% from 2021 to 2022 when the NCMEC’s hotline received over 80,500 reports. The number of incidents continued to grow in the last year at an average of 812 reports per week, according to data analyzed between August 2022 and August 2023.
The report defines sextortion as “threatening to expose sexual images of someone if they don’t yield to demands.” And while sextortion schemes are nothing new, the report found a rising trend in financial sextortion that appears to target boys and involves demands for money.
In 2023 alone, NCMEC said it received more than 26,700 reports of financial sextortion.
“Financial sextortion represents a grave and growing threat to children, especially teenage boys,” Julie Cordua, CEO of Thorn, said in a statement. “Unlike traditional forms of sextortion, these perpetrators demand money, leveraging fear and the threat of sharing intimate images to extort their victims before they have time to seek support.”
Read more here from USA Today.
