Sextortion targets minors

Scam Series art: February

MARYVILLE, Mo. — Sitting at home, safe in his bedroom, a 14-year-old boy receives a Snapchat quick add from a good-looking woman who shows an interest. Over the course of a night or even a couple days, she talks to him about Fortnite, Minecraft, maybe even what’s happening a school. She’s a Chiefs fan, just like him, and she’s willing to listen.

So when she sends him a suggestive photo of herself, he doesn’t mind reciprocating, even by sending some he’s not exactly comfortable with.

It’s only after she tells him that she’ll send the photos to all his friends unless he pays her that he realizes “she” wasn’t who he thought she was.

It could happen to anyone. It happens to thousands around the world. It also happens right here in Maryville.

Detectives Sgt. Ryan Glidden and Sgt. Adam James with the Maryville Police Department told The Forum last week that youths and families have reported this crime locally.

SCAM SERIES

This is Part 2 of The Forum’s yearlong series about scams. With the ever-evolving nature of scams, new AI technology and faster communication, people of Nodaway County and northwest Missouri are falling victim, losing more than a million dollars to scams over the past five years.

The Forum is diving into the specifics of some of the most prevalent scam types being used in Nodaway County today, red flags to look out for and what local businesses and financial institutions are doing to stop the scams before they happen.

Part 1 was published Jan. 4 and offered information from local law enforcement and banks about the millions of dollars that may have been stolen from Nodaway County residents.

According to a news release from the Kansas City Division of the FBI, a growing threat targeting minors known as “sextortion” involves an offender coercing a minor to create and send sexually explicit images or video.

From there, the offenders differ: some threaten to release the compromising material in order to prompt the victim to provide more. Others are financially motivated and threaten to release the photos or videos unless they receive payment, often requested in gift cards, mobile payment services, wire transfers or cryptocurrency.

The scam works because the most often selected victims are young males between the ages of 14 through early 20s, (though any person may become a victim) don’t often go to their parents or friends to report the occurrence. Because the teens are meeting people on social media, scammers can access all their friends and get contact information in order to pressure them into sending funds. And they tend to pay — at least at first — not realizing that the criminal will only continue to extort them.

Glidden told The Forum that sometimes it’s only after the victim has run out of money that they go to someone for help. He’s also heard from community members who don’t want to file a report, just inform the department that it occurred.

“They’re embarrassed,” Glidden said. “It’s an embarrassing thing.”

These crimes can lead victims to self-harm and even lead to suicide. From October 2021 to March 2023, the FBI and Homeland Security investigations received more than 13,000 reports of online financial sextortion of minors. This involved at least 12,600 victims — primarily boys — and led to at least 20 suicides.

While a death has not occurred locally that Glidden is aware of, “nationwide there’s actually been kids who have committed suicide because they’re like ‘Oh my life is over because this is what I’ve done,’ and they don’t know how to deal with it.”

James said that it’s important for parents to talk with their children about this scam so they know the facts. It’s just never a good idea to send photos of private body parts to anyone. The two detectives said based on their interactions with students, there has been a recent increase in local schools of girlfriends and boyfriends sending photographs of their bodies to each other and whether those photos are going to someone they know or someone online, it’s not typically a good idea to send them. Relationships end, and people online cannot always be verified, so those photos could end up anywhere, and eventually cause problems down the road.

“We just want people to communicate with their kids that if this happens to (them), it’s not the end of the world,” Glidden said. “… It’s not worth hurting yourself.”

He said reporting this crime does not put the minor in any danger of prosecution because they are the victim and the department will treat them as such. Victim information is kept confidential, especially when a minor is involved.

What it does is help law enforcement track how often these crimes are being committed and where, which allows them to help educate the public and potentially stop people from falling for the scam in the future. These reports also eventually make their way to the FBI which tracks the crimes on a national level.

Glidden said the scam is becoming more and more common. While each scam itself doesn’t appear to net an offender a large quantity of money, its simplicity allows it to be replicated thousands of times, which makes it profitable.

From October 2022 to March 2023, the FBI observed at least a 20 percent increase in reporting of financially motivated sextortion incidents involving minor victims compared to the same time period the previous year.

“The increase in incidents is staggering and heartbreaking — and this increase reflects only what has been reported,” Special Agent Stephen Cyrus of the FBI’s Kansas City Field office, said in a statement. “As parents and guardians, we must protect and educate our children on the dangers of the internet. We must understand these dangers, and that this crime does not discriminate — any child, anywhere can be a potential target for these online predators. It must be clear to our youth that they are not to blame, they are not alone and there is help.”

Glidden said that scammers know that kids around that age are starting to have their own money, whether from part-time jobs or funds from parents.

“At the end of the day, we all know that our kids are on their phone all the time,” he said. “And so these people on social media can reach out to them 24/7. So even when your child’s at home and in their bedroom and what you think is safe, that does not mean that they’re not communicating with somebody and doing these things.”

He described the process as quick and simple: a scammer will make contact through social media, whether Snapchat, Facebook, X or gaming sites, and just start chatting about anything that prompts a response. The victim responds, lowers their guard and gets more comfortable. Before long, the conversation shifts to something more sexual and builds to exchanging pictures.

He said young people aren’t yet mature enough to make the best decisions and the additional pressure of this particularly embarrassing crime makes it even more difficult for a young person to handle.

“Someone somewhere reaches out to you, really 9.9 out of 10 times it’s somebody from Nigeria,” Glidden said. “… They’ve got a fake image. They’re gonna get your image and this is what they’re gonna do.”

According to the FBI, for financially motivated sextortion, offenders are usually located outside the United States and primarily in west African countries such as Nigeria and Ivory Coast or southeast Asian countries such as the Philippines.

In local cases where the explicit images were eventually sent to family and friends, Glidden said he has suggested to victims that they claim the photos have been altered. He and James suggest any potential victim immediately disengage from that person and block them.

“Our hopes are that they’ll just move on,” James said, noting that the offender doesn’t always move on, but it becomes less valuable to them to continue. “Because if they’re not getting what they want, they’re gonna move on to an easy target that will engage with them.”

In the end, while embarrassing for a moment in time, a young person going through this scam should “Report. Don’t Pay. It’ll be OK,” Cyrus said.

Humans have seen these anatomical parts as long as they have been around. If the education about the scam is available to more people, James and Glidden are hopeful that young people will stop falling for this scam.

They would be more than happy to talk with students at schools or to organizations in order to provide more in-depth information and possibly stop some of these scams before they happen. Reach them at the Maryville Police Department.

EDITOR’S NOTE: In upcoming parts of the series, The Forum plans to offer a deeper look into specific aspects of several of the more common scams, the use of AI in scamming, how local businesses are trying to help stop scams, how banks are catching fraud every day and how local people who have been scammed are dealing with the aftermath. Part 3 will publish in March.