Report Details Changing Nature of Financial Sextortion; Teenage Boys Majority Victims

Teenage boys make up most victims of financial sextortion, and parents and law enforcement are urged to be on the lookout.  

That’s according to a new report from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and Thorn, a tech nonprofit dedicated to stopping child sexual abuse. The report studied child exploitation reports submitted to NCMEC from 2020 to 2023. 

Sextortion is when a criminal tricks a victim into sending sexually explicit images, and then threatens to expose those images if they don’t yield to the criminal’s demand. 

While sextortion traditionally targeted teenage girls, with the perpetrators knowing the victim and demanding some sort of sexual favor, the report found that 14-17-year-old teenage boys now make up 90 percent of sextortion victims, with criminals demanding money, and the attackers living overseas in organized gangs.

“Financial sextortion marks the emergence of new organized endeavors leveraging the internet to engage in financial sextortion at scale,” stated the report.

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