Sextortion is Killing Our Children. What Can We Do?

An attractive stranger sends a risqué image– that’s hard for a teenager to pass up. It all seemed above board. After all, she was 18 years old.

So he chatted with her, unafraid to show his interest. Then came the bombshell. She sent a message saying she wasn’t really 18, that she was only 15.

As if the shock of that wasn’t enough, he started getting messages from an account ostensibly belonging to her grandparents. Further messages demanded money to be paid via CashApp. The messages threatened to out him as a pedophile if he refused,

It got worse. They found his Facebook page and posted on it that he was a pedophile, claiming they had proof. Splashed all over his page, where his family and friends could see it.

We can’t know exactly what went through the young man’s head that night. Maybe he feared the reaction of his loved ones. Of being permanently labeled a pedophile. Maybe he feared prison. Of carrying the pedophile label in prison.

Whatever that greatest fear was, it drove him to commit the ultimate act of desperation. That same night, he took his own life.

Anatomy of a Sextortion, Case Study #1

None of the messages that sent the young man spiraling were sent by an 18-year-old. Not a 15-year-old, either. And not by anyone’s grandparent.

Instead, they were sent by a 35-year-old man, Glenn Daeward Boyd, prosecutors say, according to a press release by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Michigan.

Even more startling, Boyd was incarcerated at Kershaw Correctional Institution last August when the crimes occurred. He is still an inmate at the facility, according to his prison record, which can be found here. Kershaw Correctional is a medium-security prison in South Carolina.

Boyd is a five-time-convicted criminal who had been sanctioned at least ten times while in prison for offenses related to illegal cell phones and activity on social networks, according to his prison record. His convictions are for manslaughter (2), assault and battery, assaulting a correctional employee, and riot-inciting.

From prison, Boyd used a profile on the Plenty of Fish website to target his victim, according to the indictment against him. He used the handle “Jadwewet06.” Jadwewet06 claimed to be an 18-year-old woman, eventually convincing the victim to move their communications from Plenty of Fish to TextApp, a phone messaging platform.

Law enforcement officials call these “sextortion” crimes– a portmanteau of sex and extortion. Sextortion perpetrators blackmail their victims by threatening to release sexually explicit material or otherwise outing them in some way.

Sextortion: A New Trend

Many sextortion targets are adolescents, especially males between the ages of 14 and 17, according to the FBI.

Sextortion criminals prey on the shame and fear of their victims, who may fear the reaction of friends, family, and law enforcement.

As in the case of Jadwetwet06, sextortion fraudsters often lead their victims to falsely believe that they will be publicly shamed or exposed as criminals if they don’t comply with the fraudsters’ demands.

The victim in the Jadwetwet06 case wasn’t alone in believing his only way out was through suicide. The FBI has identified at least 20 victims who committed suicide due to sextortion attempts in 2023– and that’s just in the United States.

And many others have been blackmailed into giving money or sexually explicit images of themselves to these depraved criminals.

An All-Too-Easy Crime

That Boyd was allegedly able to pose as Jadwetwet06 and harass his victim into killing himself from prison speaks to how these sextortion crimes can be committed from virtually anywhere. All a would-be “sextorter” needs is an Internet connection and criminal levels of guile.

Convicted felons can commit these crimes from behind bars, even when they aren’t supposed to have Internet access. A report of violations of the social media policy in South Carolina prisons dated October 26, 2023, and ostensibly going back to July 24, 2012, is 244 pages long and shows thousands of known violations during that 11-year period.

In other cases, criminals have engaged in sextortion crimes from the same overseas locations where other telephone and email scams flourish.

Sextortion Tactics

It’s important to understand the techniques perpetrators of sextortion attempts use to reel in their victims.

In traditional sextortion attempts, scammers befriend their targets on gaming and social media sites, according to this Homeland Security post. They socially engineer or blackmail their victims into providing sexually explicit photos of themselves. Sometimes they use these images to get more of the same from their victims. In this example, the whole point of the scam is to gain access to explicit photos, especially of children, that the scammers can trade or sell.

A second tactic, financial sextortion, works similarly, except that criminals are more focused on getting money from their victims. They threaten to publish sensitive photos, chats, or, as in the case of Jadwetwet06, false allegations unless their victim pays them a ransom.

In another variant of financial sextortion, criminals surreptitiously capture explicit images of their victims by hacking their hard drives or their webcams. They use these stolen images to blackmail their victims for money or more images, as in this case from The Daily Muck’s archives.

The Rise of Sextortion Scams

While the exact number of sextortion victims is unknown, the FBI says the scams are increasing.

Last year, the FBI issued an alert in which it noted a 20% increase in sextortion scams over a six-month period.

In 2022, the National Centers for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) received 10,731 reports of financial sextortion. In 2023, that number more than doubled to 26,718, according to newly released figures. NCMEC is a nonprofit corporation whose stated mission is “to help find missing children, reduce child sexual exploitation, and prevent child victimization.”

While the main targets are boys aged 14-17, adults also can be targets. Some schemes have targeted children as young as seven, according to an FBI public safety announcement released in January.

Sextortion Case Study #2

A second case study shows that perpetrators of sextortion often know full well that their crimes might result in the suicides of their victims, who often cannot bear the idea that their most private moments might be exposed to their friends and families.

In April, brothers Samuel and Samson Ogoshi pleaded guilty to charges related to sextortion scams, according to a Justice Department press release. The Ogoshi brothers had been extradited from Nigeria, where they committed their crimes.

As in the Jadwetwet06 case, the Ogoshi brothers provoked at least one of their victims, Jordan DeMay, to commit suicide. DeMay was 17.

Jordan DeMay’s name has been publicly released, and his parents have come forward to support efforts to bring awareness to the threat posed by sextortion networks like the ones responsible for the death of their son.

The Ogoshi brothers and a co-conspirator used the profile name Dani Robertts, a stolen online persona, to target DeMay and others. Excerpts from messages, as reported in their indictment show a callous disregard for the fate of their victims.

dani.robertts: “I have screenshot all ur followers and tags can send this nudes to everyone and also send your nudes to your Family and friends Until it goes viral…All you’ve to do is to cooperate with me and I won’t expose you”
dani.robertts: “Are you gonna cooperate with me”
dani.robertts: “Just pay me rn” [“Just pay me right now”]
dani.robertts: “And I won’t expose you”

Victim 1: “How much”

dani.robertts: “$1000”

The victim then paid $300 through a cash app to the Dani Robertts alias. But the harassment and threats persisted.

dani.robertts: “Goodbye”
dani.robertts: “Enjoy your miserable life”

Victim 1: “I’m kms rn” [“I’m kill myself right now”]
Victim 1: “Bc of you” [“Because of you”]

dani.robertts: “Good”
dani.robertts: “Do that fast”
dani.robertts: “Or I’ll make you do it”
dani.robertts: “I swear to God”

In messages to another victim, fraudsters posing as Dani Robertts wrote:

dani.robertts: “I will make you regret you life”
dani.robertts: “I will make u commit suicide”
dani.robertts: “I promise you I swear”

In his guilty plea, Samuel Ogoshi admitted that he and his co-conspirators targeted over a hundred victims for sextortion, including minors, according to Ogoshi’s signed plea agreement.

Furthermore, Ogoshi stipulated in his plea that while one of them chatted up their mark, the other two conspirators would conduct Internet searches to dig up details about their victim’s life. They would use that information to socially engineer their victim to send explicit photos.

And the blackmail would begin.

How to Stop Sextortion:

Spreading awareness of sextortion scam tactics is probably the most effective way to stop people from being victimized by them.

People should be wary of anyone who elicits them for an online relationship. Some of these approaches may come from accounts that look legitimate, but criminals can create convincing online personas, not to mention stealing hacked accounts. It can be virtually impossible to tell the difference between real and fake accounts.

Also, people should not believe everything they read. Sometimes, sextortion scams come in the form of a phishing attack, with fraudsters claiming sexually explicit information about a target when in fact, they do not have this information. Scammers send emails and messages like these out by the thousands. People who respond often become victims.

The FBI also offers the following tips to deal with and prevent sextortion attempts:

• Be selective about what you share online
• Block or ignore messages from strangers
• Be aware that people can pretend to be anyone online, including creating fake personas or using stolen accounts
• Be suspicious when meeting someone on what platform that asks you to switch to another
• Understand that anything you post online can be made public, even if you don’t choose to do so
• Block suspicious accounts, report nefarious activity to site administrators
• Ask for help from a friend or, in the case of children, a trusted adult
• Talk to children about what sextortion attempts may look like

In the event that someone is victimized by a sextortion attempt, they can report it to their local FBI field office or report it to the FBI online here.

People reporting these attempts can block the accounts of their would-be extorters but should not delete existing messages, these can help investigators stop these fraudsters.

Even if these messages contain embarrassing information or allegations, victims can trust law enforcement to respect their privacy and be discrete. These authorities can also take measures to stop the further spread of the sensitive material.

Finally, as with any blackmail or ransomware crime, victims should think twice before sending any money. Paying extortionists does not always stop them from carrying out their threats; in fact, it could encourage them to return again and again with escalating demands.

A Tragic Legacy

Most of us realize that what we see on the Internet isn’t necessarily true, but that doesn’t stop many from having moments of weakness and falling for scams.

“Sextortion is a horrible crime that can leave especially younger victims feeling ashamed with nowhere to turn,” said U.S. Attorney Mark Totten, who prosecuted the Ogoshi brothers, in a statement.

“My heart goes out to the family of Jordan DeMay. Nothing can bring Jordan back, but my office is committed to securing justice and, alongside Jordan’s family, sending an urgent warning so others can protect themselves and their families. We will travel the world to hold the perpetrators of these crimes accountable,” Totten said.

And finally, an excerpt of a written statement by the parents of Jordan DeMay.

Jordan was a son, a brother, a grandson, a friend, a student, a co-worker and a role model. He was the perfect mix of fun-loving and hard-working. He played hard, he loved hard, and he never held back. If you caught Jordan on a summer day, he’d likely be cruising in his car with the music up, taking in as much sun as he could at the beach and dancing without a care in the world.

It’s hard to believe that this describes a boy destined to commit suicide at 17. But the victims of sextortion crimes come in many forms and from all walks of life.

What do sextortion victims look like? They look like us, our siblings, our friends, our nieces and nephews.

Our kids.