Charles, who is in his early 30s and works in a big British metropolis, is well-off. He is wealthy and tech adept, but like many men and women, he is also ignorant and easily duped.
And he has paid a high price for this.
‘This week, I was a victim of cybercrime — specifically what I think is known as sextortion,’ he said. ‘A young and attractive woman, probably in her early 30s, sent me a message on Instagram telling me she lived nearby.
‘She invited me to sign into Telegram [an encrypted online chat platform, similar to WhatsApp] and chat. I was bored so I thought, why not.’
It proved to be a terrible mistake. Their conversation soon turned sexual. ‘Within a couple of hours, I had sent her an explicit video. She became even more friendly, telling me I was “hot” and asking for a picture of my face.
And, like an idiot, I obliged.
‘As soon as I did that, I got another message back — almost immediately, but this time it was from a man. He wanted £1,000 or he would send the video and pictures of my face to all my followers on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. That would include my friends, my sisters and my nephews and nieces — and a lot of people from work.
‘I was terrified. I have deleted all my accounts. But the demands for money are becoming bigger and more insistent, the threats scarier.’
Now Carl is living a nightmare. ‘He has told me he will give me a bit more time to get the money together, but I have no idea how long this is going to last. I have talked to the police but since I don’t know who this person is, they say they just don’t have the resources to track him down. It’s a horrible crime and I still don’t know why I was so stupid as to fall for it.’
Carl is a victim of “sextortion,” a pernicious crime that is on the rise and nearly impossible to eradicate.
It normally begins with a brief online conversation between strangers, as it did in his instance, usually on a social media platform like Snapchat or Instagram. The victim is quickly under pressure to give the person talking to them—typically an attractive person of the opposite sex—intimate pictures or videos of themselves. After the material is received, the sender is then threatened with blackmail for amounts that frequently reach the tens of thousands of pounds. It might result in disaster.
These are crimes that haunt their victims for life, as the Mail’s recent investigations into the scope of fraud taking place in Britain have eloquently demonstrated.
Sextortion, according to the men and women who have experienced it, can be much more damaging than blackmail. The fact that they will never know the names of the perpetrators—who are merely hiding in internet, untraceable—participates in their sense of horror.
Sextortion cases now account for a quarter of all online harassment instances reported to the charity SWGfL, which runs a helpline for victims of “revenge porn” and receives funding from the Government, according to a recent report.
Sextortion instances documented during the epidemic increased by more than 40% between 2020 and 2021, and 90% of the victims were male.
According to experts, this is a result of people spending more time at home, frequently alone, where they were easy prey for crooks.
Undoubtedly, a lot of people will hold the opinion that if you’re foolish enough to post intimate photos of yourself online, you should be prepared to deal with the repercussions.
But a lot of the victims are young, impressionable, and occasionally lonesome and awkward with people. They are all too easily persuaded and frequently just searching for a girlfriend.
On a U.S. website created to aid sextortion victims, a second British victim shared his experience. His story is consistent with Carl’s.
‘I was chatting with what I thought was a girl via Snapchat, and she started following me on Instagram.’
After he had sent her sexual images, he said: ‘The messages took a turn. She created an Instagram group with a load of my friends and threatened to release pictures of me. She asked for £500, which I did initially pay … They then released the photos via the Instagram group anyway.’
Many of the victims of sextortion are similarly culpable. But the problem is becoming so severe it is almost impossible for the blackmailers to be brought to book.
And men aren’t the only victims — the women who persuade them to share their pictures are often victims themselves.
Coral Dando is a former Metropolitan Police detective who is now a professor of forensic psychology at the University of Westminster.
She told the Mail: ‘Many of these women have been trafficked into this kind of work. It’s very difficult to identify the gangs involved, but we know organised crime is behind a lot of this type of extortion.
‘The gangsters are invisible but the women are not and could be key to getting people caught. They are victims of what is effectively modern slavery — and although some members of the public might believe male sextortion victims bring it on themselves, these women are innocent.’
The Revenge Porn helpline says it received 1,124 reports of sextortion in 2021 compared with 593 the year before. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
‘Many people are simply too embarrassed to report sextortion because they think it reflects badly on them,’ says Zara Ward, who deals with sextortion victims every day. ‘They just pay up. And the platforms could do much more to warn people.’
According to the most recent study from her nonprofit, 65% of those who report their encounters to the police are dissatisfied with the outcome.
However, due to a lack of resources, many units prioritise looking into cases of child pornography and paedophile gang grooming.
Sextortion is a crime that may cause significant harm, both emotionally and financially, according to a spokeswoman for the National Crime Agency (NCA), which is in charge of managing the country’s response to cyber crime, who talked to the Mail. Victims must immediately report such occurrences to their local police, who will handle any complaints delicately and confidentially.
Some victims are turning to law firms as their first port of call because they are frustrated by the police’s apparent failure to take action against the sextortionists. At the prestigious London law firm Kingsley Napley, David Sleight is a partner in the criminal litigation department.
Expert in cybercrime, he has seen a sharp rise in the number of sextortion victims seeking his firm’s counsel, frequently in dire situations.
‘They are embarrassed and often humiliated,’ he says. ‘They are frequently in a state of some anxiety, since they don’t know how their lives, marriages and careers will be affected at the hands of the blackmailers.
‘Blackmail is an awful crime because victims feel helpless and can’t control it. Unless, of course, you are willing to go to court. And not everyone is, for obvious reasons.’
Mr Sleight adds that victims of sextortion often pay up long before the police get involved. ‘In a blackmail or sextortion trial, there is no automatic right to anonymity for victims, unlike victims of rape. The grisly detail will be heard by everyone in court and potentially reported by the Press. That’s one reason so few sextortion cases end up in court.
‘The people who come to us are sometimes being asked for £5,000 or £10,000 by the blackmailers. Generally, they can afford to pay, but our advice is often to ignore the threats — and do nothing.
‘Sometimes the online extortionists are operating on such an industrial scale that they are putting out demands for money by the thousand . . . they are hoping that just a handful of victims will bite, and what they get from them will make it worth their while.’
Professor Roberta O’Malley of the University of Southern Florida is one of the world’s leading experts on this sordid crime.
‘It may start with a demand for £100, but it soon creeps up,’ she says. ‘We’ve also noticed among younger victims that there is an element of “bidding down”. If a teenager doesn’t have £1,000, the perpetrator might ask for £500 and they pay up. Then it starts again.’
Prof O’Malley is under no illusions about what motivates some of the victims. ‘They’re engaging in risky behaviour; they’re meeting other risky people,’ she says. ‘And these men are pleased they are finally getting reached out to by women on dating apps. ‘
The criminals know that and that’s why these communications can get so explicit so quickly. The victims don’t know they’re being blackmailed till it’s too late.’
Prof O’Malley believes social media platforms should do much more to warn users about the risk.
‘A lot of the platforms, such as Tinder, Grindr, Instagram and Snapchat are just ignoring it. The dating apps are probably the worst — they are already letting ads from sex workers appear without any sanction. No wonder they don’t seem interested in combating the blackmailers. Social media platforms know sextortion is going on, but unless someone complains to them about being a victim, they won’t do anything.’
Some cases of extortion have had tragic consequences. In 2013, 17-year-old Danny Perry from Dunfermline threw himself to his death from the Forth Road Bridge. He had been duped into an explicit Skype chat with what he thought was a young woman: two Filipino men were later arrested in Manila for blackmailing him, but they have not been prosecuted.
His mother, Nicola Perry, recalled at the time: ‘It was a female he was talking to. I believe they were talking for a few months and he believed he was talking to this American girl from Illinois.’
Another victim, John, fell prey to a similar crime. He told the BBC what happened to him. ‘I went on Facebook and she said: “Add me on Skype.” So I did and she then said: “Let’s do webcam and I’ll get naked for you.”’
Like so many others he allowed himself to be cajoled into appearing on video.
‘She said she’d tell my family and friends, tell my daughter, tell my wife — and ruin your life, ruin your family. I was very frightened — just the thought of them seeing that was really terrifying. ‘
I feel like telling everyone about it … it happens to a lot of people … Just the thought of your close family and friends seeing that video, it terrifies you.’
Ronan Hughes, from Co. Tyrone, Northern Ireland, also took his own life in 2015 after he was targeted on Facebook by a gang based in Romania.
They threatened to release pictures to his family unless he sent them £3,400 in Bitcoins.
He told them, just before his death: ‘I’m only 17, please, I’m begging you — don’t.’
The perpetrator replied: ‘That’s not my problem. Foolishness has a price. And you’ll pay.
‘Do you want to tell your mother or will I? You have 48 hours from now. Time is running out!’
Ronan was found dead in a field near his home. The extortionists were eventually caught in Romania and jailed for four years.
The Mail approached Meta, which also owns Instagram. Meta did not wish to comment on this case, but a spokesperson said that the company supports the use of StopNCII.org, a tool that helps end the non-consensual sharing of intimate images.
‘We’ve invested heavily in strengthening our technology to keep fake accounts off Facebook and Instagram,’ they added.
These gangs are active outside of Britain, primarily in the Philippines but also in Romania, Morocco, and the Ivory Coast, despite assurances from the government that they are doing everything possible to combat sextortion.
Any investigation abroad needs a lot of funding. The issue is that the general public frequently holds the victims accountable for succumbing to the offenders.
There is a chance that this will appear to have blatant double standards. We feel sorry for someone who unknowingly loses money to financial scammers, possibly someone who is elderly or more susceptible.
But when a similarly naïve person shares intimate photos with someone they think is a willing partner and is later blackmailed for them, society frequently assumes that it was their own fault because they were so stupid.
And whether we like it or not, a lot of younger people—probably the majority—do email intimate photos of themselves to their partners.
Dr Calli Tzani, an investigative psychologist at Huddersfield University, told the Mail: ‘Of course, it’s common sense not to send intimate pictures to anyone. But sextortion has become such a problem that unless we do something about it, we may find more lives ruined, more suicides, more families devastated.
‘Is it right that so many innocent people should suffer from a single, simple mistake?’
- Carl’s account came via a third party involved in helping victims. His name was changed to protect his identity. Stop.NCII.org can be downloaded free of charge.