Sciotodale Man Hit By Sextortion Scam
A Sciotodale man learned the hard way that it’s never a good idea to share explicit pictures with strangers.
He contacted the police just after 1 pm to report that things had taken a nasty turn with his new online friend. He told officers he met a woman on Snapchat the night before and sent her some nude photos.
Now, the woman was threatened to post the pictures on the Internet if he didn’t cough up some money.
Officers advised the man not to send naked pictures to strangers.
What is sextortion?
Online sextortion occurs when someone asks for inappropriate photos or other compromising information online, then threatens to release the information unless payment is made.
It is common for victims to be forced to continually send more and more explicit images or videos in order to prevent the perpetrator from releasing the photos they already possess.
Teenagers and young adults are particularly susceptible to this. Sextortion is considered a growing epidemic by experts.
“Virtually every child porn case that we see is a sextortion case,” says University of Kentucky psychology professor Chris Hansen, the CEO of safety training organization Cyber civil rights Initiative and author of the forthcoming book “Cyber Rage: A Psychology of Online Crime.”
Not all sextortion offenders have a sexual interest in children. This crime also affects adults.
The FBI says sextortion “relates to a threat that a person or group of people are attempting to extort money or other valuable items from another person by threatening to release intimate images that the victim knows, or reasonably should know, will compromise their family or work life.”