In recent years, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has seen a huge spike in sextortion cases involving minors across the country. This week, the bureau’s Detroit field office will begin hosting webinars educating the public about this issue.
A debut community webinar is scheduled for 6 p.m. ET Friday. Participants will see presentations that provide an overview of the problem and that show what sextortion looks like, as well as information about threat indicators and signs of exploitation.
“For those of you who are unfamiliar, sextortion is a crime where an individual befriends a young adolescent or a young adult online into sending compromising photos of themselves – which is later used to extort them or to threaten to do harm to themselves for financial gain,” Cheyvoryea Gibson, special agent in charge of the FBI in Michigan, told reporters ahead of the session.
He said that the webinar is intended to educate parents, guardians, schools, social workers, and more to the dangers of online exploitation of children. As tech becomes more incorporated into our everyday lives, the potential entry points for exploitation grow, from family computers to smartphones, tablets and gaming consoles. Gibson said any device that connects to the internet makes children vulnerable.
“It’s a very pervasive problem and here in Michigan we’ve had some young adolescents commit suicide because of the aggressive nature of the perpetrators who are extorting our youth,” he added. “Just to give you some statistical accomplishments, in 2023 the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received approximately 187 tips related to sextortion around the United States.
WWJ has previously reported on the case of 17-year-old Jordan DeMay, a resident of Marquette, Michigan. He died by suicide after becoming a victim of sextortion.
“The FBI extradited five Nigerians who were responsible for extorting Jordan DeMay and extradited them from Nigeria back here to the United States to be held accountable for their part in Jordan DeMay’s suicide,” said Gibson.
While the numbers of reports are troubling enough, Gibson said that authorities are also concerned about the cases that don’t get reported.
“Oftentimes these perpetrators will create an online persona that matches the interests of the victim that they are stalking, whether it’s a particular club or a sport or something,” he explained. “And then they will take time and befriend that person and develop trust to the point where they are enticing the victim to send compromising photos of themselves – and once you send that photo then that is when the relationship changes and the perpetrator becomes more aggressive and begins to demand more compromising photos or financial compensation from the victim, so that they will not release these photos to their friends, parents, or people that they know.”
By hosting webinars for the community, the FBI hopes to reduce and eventually eradicate these sextortion cases. Gibson said open and honest communication about the problem is key to stopping it.
“If they do become a victim of sextortion, please make sure that you tell them that it’s not their fault,” he told parents. “Make sure that you get the resources that they need to help them through this process. But more importantly, you contact your local law enforcement,” and the FBI.
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In addition to open conversation, Gibson said that parents should control access to their children’s devices and use mirror accounts to check in on what they are doing. He said that policing these devices is needed to prevent minors from falling prey to people trying to exploit them.
“Take their devices and see if they are sending pictures to folks that are unknown to them or compromising photos that they should not be sending,” he said. “Also pay attention to change in indicators if your kid has been acting different.”
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