The National Crime Agency has warned overseas cybercriminals that it may seek to extradite them as part of a drive to combat an alarming increase in the number of young people targeted for sextortion.
The agency stated that the gangs, which are frequently located in West Africa, are “not safe from prosecution in our country” and that it will seek justice for all victims of the crime.
Sextortion occurs when minors are deceived online into giving intimate photos of themselves to fraudsters, who then demand money and threaten to publish the information with others.
The Ealryrise has discovered that extensive manuals for sextortion in written and video versions are freely available online, with offenders providing personalised training for an additional fee.
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has identified a crime as “the biggest trend we’ve seen and one of the cruellest” in terms of kid safety, and the NCA intends to implement a new recording measure to assess its severity.
Sextortion has been linked to the deaths of at least two UK teens in recent years. Dinal De Alwis, 16, of south London, a “golden boy” according to his parents, committed suicide after being blackmailed over nude images.
Shortly after being the target of cyber-blackmailers, Murray Dowey, 16, of Dunblane, passed away. His parents told the Guardian that their family had been “absolutely shattered in the space of a few hours”.
Victim-supporting organisations are urging the Labour administration and crime agencies to prioritise sextortion to avoid “more lives being devastated”.
The IWF, which monitors child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online, reported a 19% increase in reports of CSAM related to financial sextortion in the first half of this year compared to the previous year.
It received 89 confirmed allegations of sextortion-related content involving under-18s, compared to 75 in the same period in 2023. The numbers reveal a rise of female victims from one last year to 27 in 2024, while the number of boys, who are normally more frequently targeted in sextortion instances, declined by 12% to 61.
According to Tamsin McNally, manager of the IWF’s hotline for reporting suspected CSAM, the increase is likely due to criminals becoming more skilled and expanding their scope to profit from it.
The majority of cases observed by the IWF are classified as CSAM’s lowest category, C. The most afflicted age group was 16–17, with 45 victims, and the largest increase was among 14- to 15-year-olds, which increased by 25% to 40.
McNally stated, “Sextortion is the biggest trend we’ve observed and one of the cruellest. It’s something I see every day, with reports coming in from all around the world, including the UK.”
According to the NCA, West Africa, particularly Nigeria, has become a hotspot for sextortion gangs. In early June, the agency welcomed a four-day visit from Nigeria’s National Cyber Crime Centre (NCCC) to London, where they addressed fraud and a variety of cybercrimes, including sextortion.
Two Nigerian men were extradited to the US in August 2023 to face charges for online extortion and their involvement in the death of Jordan DeMay, a 17-year-old from Michigan. Earlier this year, two men were accused in Nigeria of the alleged sexual extortion of a 16-year-old Australian boy who committed suicide the previous year.
According to Adam Priestley, a senior manager at the National Crime Agency, extradition is not the sole option, and agencies may collaborate with foreign law enforcement to bring culprits to justice in their own countries.
“It is the ambition of the NCA to work together with UK and international partners to achieve a judicial outcome,” he commented. “Especially when a young person has died, we seek a legal conclusion that accurately reflects the gravity of the act. If you upset folks in the United Kingdom, this is what happens: “You are not immune to prosecution in our country.”
The NCA noted that it was still difficult to correctly assess the scale of sextortion because it falls under other recording categories, such as blackmail and fraud. The agency is now planning to create a separate category for documenting sextortion instances.
Sean Sutton, another NCA senior manager, stated, “We are in the process of agreeing on a single codeword to be used across law enforcement to help track the scale and better coordinate our response to this threat going forward.”
Earlyrise has observed evidence of the crime’s international scope. In one written instruction that spans more than 80 pages, the author states that the top three countries for effective internet extortion are the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada. They encourage the reader to concentrate on teenagers and young adults, and they may expect to receive sexually explicit content “from at least 5–10 targets out of 200.”.
According to Sophie Mortimer, manager of the Revenge Porn Helpline, which assists over-18s with online abuses, sextortion instances have increased “massively” since the line’s establishment nine years ago. She was frustrated that the matter had only recently become a focus for the NCA. The NCA says it began raising awareness about the issue in 2016.
She remarked, “Lives are being shattered. We need more political will to address these concerns. We know the money is going overseas, and it is going to the same countries over and over. It’s headed to the Philippines, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Morocco. My main request to the new Labour administration and senior police officials is to begin taking action.”