How families can protect children as FBI sees increase in online sextortion cases

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• Amna Nawaz:

  FBI Field offices across the country have reported an increase in youth sextortion cases, where sexually explicit content is used as blackmail.

  Stephanie Sy reports on the concerning trend and preventive efforts to protect minors.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Social media has become fertile ground for scammers to target young people. And, in some cases, the consequences have been deadly.

  In a two-year period between October 2021 to March 2023, the FBI received over 13,000 reports of online financial sextortion of minors. It impacted 12,600 victims and led to at least 20 suicides.

  FBI Special agent Emily Steele joins us from the Phoenix field office with more on what the dangers of sextortion are and what parents can do to prevent it.

  Agent Steele, thank you so much for joining the "NewsHour."

  First of all, give me a sense of how prevalent this crime has become and why the FBI is especially concerned about young people.

• Emily Steele, FBI Special Agent:

  This crime has become significantly more prevalent, especially with younger children's access to technology.

  So, whether it be receiving an iPad or a Chromebook from school that has Internet connection or even just availability of getting on a parent's phone and using social media, kids are learning younger and younger how to navigate through the Internet and online social media world. And that's creating more victims for predators.

• Stephanie Sy:

  OK, so this is happening, I understand, through social media.

  How exactly are these people luring children in through these platforms? How does it work?

• Emily Steele:

  You know, it can be described in a long or short process, but the short process is, children are vulnerable, and children are everywhere online and not using proper security techniques on their social media.

  So, say, for instance, they have an Instagram. It's not set to private and anyone can follow them and see what they're doing on their day-to-day activity.

  So if a child posts on their Instagram Story, for instance, that they're in school and they're taking pictures with their friends, well, then a predator instantly knows that this is a minor because they are in school. From there, it can be as easy as sending a direct message and complimenting the minor or pretending to be a minor from the opposite sex and asking for nude photos.

  And, unfortunately, it happens very quickly. It's not a long process or a long, drawn-out relationship. It can happen in a matter of minutes that they are convincing these children to send nude or explicit photos and videos of themselves.

• Stephanie Sy:

  So it's an adult that's often pretending to be a child, and there's no way for the kid to know that. And then they get the kid to send some sort of nude, compromising photo to them.

  And then what do they do?

• Emily Steele:

  There are two situations that can happen. I like to kind of separate two different sextorters.

  The first one is going to be the money-hungry sextorter. Typically, that's going to be an individual from overseas. We see a lot of African countries, or specifically coming out of Nigeria, that there are these huge schemes to target children because they're vulnerable and scared.

  So, once an individual receives the nude photo, they then tell the child that, hey, I'm not who you thought I was. You better send me $50 or I'm going to send this photo to everyone on your followers. And what this individual has done is they have already screenshotted who this kid is following. So it doesn't even matter if the kid blocks them.

  They still have access to all that. So that's kind of the first type of predator who, if they can do this to 10 kids, and five of those 10 kids send them $50, it's a pretty easy payday for them. The other side of it is an individual who is asking for this type of content simply because it's a child. So that's who — they are attracted to children.

  They are attracted to that type of content, and it's not just a get rich quick scheme. So it's two very different mind-sets, but both of those categories fall under sextortion.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Is it boys and girls, Agent Steele, being equally targeted? Are there certain age groups they're targeting?

• Emily Steele:

  So it is both boys and girls. We have seen a rise in the amount of male, or boy, victims in the last few years, but it is still largely female.

  And, typically, what we're seeing is boys, the ages are between 14 and 17, and girls are a little younger. The female victims are — we're seeing anywhere from 12 to 17. And I have had a victim as young as 7 be targeted for sextortion. So it can really be any minor that has access to the Internet, but it is both boys and girls.

• Stephanie Sy:

  And you mentioned Instagram.

  What are the other platforms that people need to be aware of? And is it also true that sometimes the predators can get to kids via games, such as Roblox?

• Emily Steele:

  Yes.

  So Roblox is one of the major platforms that we see victims come from. Actually, my 7-year-old victim that I just talked about that, that started on Roblox, and the individual was paying this 7-year-old in Robux to send him stuff on Snapchat.

  So you have Roblox, you have Snapchat, you have Instagram, and then Discord. Discord is also a big one. Discord is an application the phone or you can access it from just a regular computer. And it is big in the gaming world. A lot of them like to get on Discord and get in these gaming rooms to talk about the game.

  These predators know that these kids do this, and they will jump into these rooms and catch them that way as well.

• Stephanie Sy:

  I know that you yourself as an FBI special agent have been going out to schools to try to educate parents and students. What is the one most tangible thing that a parent or educator can do to protect their kids from this?

• Emily Steele:

  Specifically, on the parents' side, I always say the parent pays for the phone. You should know what is on that phone.

  And that includes knowing the pin to the phone, as well as knowing the passwords for accounts. If the child is starting to act off or weird or extremely attached to their phone and they can't leave it for even a second, it's not a bad idea to be able to go in and see what's going on, see why — what is on their phone that they are so scared to leave behind.

  So I think, if I had to pick one, just one measure to take, it would be having access to your children's social media and knowing, what applications do they have? Do they have Snapchat? Do they have Instagram? Just checking that every once in a while.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Agent Emily Steele with the Phoenix field office of the FBI, thank you so much for joining us.

• Emily Steele:

  Thank you.

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