PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — St Petersburg Police and the FBI are sounding the alarm on a spike in sextortion cases, they say, as victims get younger and younger.
They released aPSA video Thursday, hoping to create awareness between teens and their parents to stop the trend.
“In the last week alone, we have had over 15 new cases,” exclaimed FBI Special Agent David Walker. The FBI teamed up with St Pete police on a trend they said is not Tampa Bay but nationwide.
“Let me be clear, anyone can be a victim, but traditional victims are young males, often 13 to 17 years old,” Walker explained.
St. Pete Police Chief Anthony Holloway said their youngest victim was nine years old.
Authorities said criminals are getting smarter and more organized, convincing teens that they’re young girl or guy who wants to date when they are, in fact, much older person, sometimes as far as Nigeria, and they use nude photos as leverage to get money from the victim.
“We have one case here in St. Pete where a guy spent, or paid back in person, more than $10,000 In two months so they would not post his picture on social media, and after he stopped making the payment, the bad person went ahead and did post to their (picture too) social media,” Chief Holloway said.
Police said one of the main ways these criminals communicate is through dating apps. Anyone can create a fake profile and gain access to lists of friends on social media to send them your photos.
ABC Action News first reported the alarming trend in July.
“For children, we've seen that approximately 67% increase. And for adults, we've seen approximately 47% increase,” Detective Henry Snowden with St Pete Police said.
At the time, the unit had worked on 35 cases from January to July 2023. August 17, Chief Holloway said they’ve worked with 11 juveniles and 25 adults, “And those are the people that reported to us,” he said.
Police are asking parents to have a hard conversation with their children and for anyone who has been a victim to report it.
“Save everything. Save all the information that you've been sending… bank accounts, because we're going to need all that so we can trace the person,” Holloway said.
The FBI said they’re tracing suspects worldwide, but local agents confirmed they’d made one recent arrest in St Pete.
In March 2022, a teenage boy in Michigan committed suicide after he became a victim of sextortion, according to police.
Authorities traced two men back to Nigeria and linked them to targeting more than 100 victims. The federal government announced this week that they will be extradited to the US, accused of running a global sextortion ring.
