Sextortion

Sextortion (a portmanteau of sex and extortion) employs non-physical forms of coercion to extort sexual favors from the victim. Sextortion refers to the broad category of sexual exploitation in which abuse of power is the means of coercion, as well as to the category of sexual exploitation in which threatened release of sexual images or information is the means of coercion.^[2]

A mockup example of a sextortion text message. After obtaining naked photographs or videos of the victim, the scammer then threatens the publication of these pictures or to send them to close friends and family members. A demand of money is then made, though usually the scam is either a bluff (e.g. the scammer never intended to publish them) or the pictures/videos are published regardless even if the money is sent.^[1]

As used to describe an abuse of power, sextortion is a form of corruption^[3] in which people entrusted with power – such as government officials, judges, educators, law enforcement personnel, and employers – seek to extort sexual favors in exchange for something within their authority to grant or withhold.^{[4][5][6][7][8]} Examples of such abuses of power include: government officials who request sexual favors to obtain licenses or permits,^[9][10] teachers who trade good grades for sex with students,^[11][12] and employers who make providing sexual favors a condition of obtaining a job or getting promoted.^{[citation needed]}. A Transparency International report on sextortion noted some challenges in prosecuting sextortion under existing anti-corruption and gender-based violence legal frameworks.^[13]

Sextortion also refers to a form of blackmail in which sexual information or images are used to extort money or sexual favors from the victim.^[14][15] Social media and text messages are often the source of the sexual material and the threatened means of sharing it with others. An example of this type of sextortion is where people are extorted with a nude image of themselves they shared on the Internet through sexting. They are later coerced into giving money, or performing sexual acts with the person doing the extorting or are coerced into posing or performing sexually on camera, thus producing hardcore pornography.^[16][15] This method of blackmail is also frequently used to out LGBT people who keep their true sexual orientation private.^[17]

A video highlighting the dangers of sextortion has been released by the National Crime Agency^[18] in the UK to educate people, especially given the fact that blackmail of a sexual nature may cause humiliation to a sufficient extent to cause the victim to take their own life,^[19] in addition to other efforts to educate the public on the risks of sextortion.^[20]

Webcam blackmail

See also: Cybersex trafficking

Sextortion using webcam content is concerning, especially for those who use them for flirting and cybersex.^[20][19] Often this involves a cybercriminal posing as someone else – such as an attractive person – initiating communication of a sexual nature with the victim (about 95% of victims are male).^[19] Often, the cybercriminal simply shows the victim a pre-recorded video of a performer from a cybersex webcam site which they are sufficiently familiar with, then messages the victim at points in the video where the performer appears to be typing on the keyboard, to give the illusion that the performer in the video is messaging them.^[21] The victim is then persuaded to undress in front of a webcam, and may also be persuaded to engage in sexual behaviour, such as masturbation.^[21] The video is recorded by the cybercriminal, who then reveals their true intent and demands money or other services (such as more explicit images of the victim, in cases of online predation), and threatening to publicly release the video to video services like YouTube and send it to family members and friends of the victim if they do not comply. Sometimes threats to make false allegations of paedophilia against the victim are made as well.^[21] This is known as webcam blackmail.^[22] An increase in webcam blackmails have been reported, and it affects both young and old, male and female alike.^[23][24] Webcam blackmail is also connected with webcam trolling.^[25]

History

An early use of the term appears in print in 1950 in California.^[26]

Since early 2009, The Institute for Responsible Online and Cell-Phone Communication (iroc2.org) began warning the public about the trend of "Sextortion" via live events and websites including www.sextortion.org. This is a trend that grew based on the birth and growth of the trend known as "sexting" whereby compromising images and videos were being shared by individuals without a real understanding of the short and long term consequences of sharing "private" content on digital tools designed for sharing.

In 2009, the International Association of Women Judges (IAWJ), in partnership with the Association of Women Judges in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Philippine Women Judges Association, and the Tanzania Women Judges Association, and with funding from the Government of the Netherlands, launched a three-year program on "Stopping the Abuse of Power through Sexual Exploitation: Naming, Shaming, and Ending Sextortion."^[27] Presentations on sextortion were made to judges attending the 2010^[28] and 2012 Biennial World Conferences of the IAWJ^[29][30] and to NGOs attending the 2011^[31] and 2012 meetings of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.^[4]

There are also scientific studies describing the prevalence of sextortion in Europe, etc. in the Czech Republic (2017).^[32]

In China, there are cases of sextortion as part of predatory lending to students.^[33]

In 2022, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection noted a tripling of cases compared to previous years and a change away from female victims being sextorted for images towards young male victims being sextorted for money.^[15]

In 2023, the U.S. saw a 150% rise in sextortion attempts according to data by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). ^[34][35]

Incidents

Incidents of sextortion have been prosecuted under various criminal statutes, including as extortion,^[36][37][38] bribery,^[39] breach of trust,^[40] corruption,^[41] sexual coercion,^[37][42] sexual exploitation,^[16] sexual assault,^[38] child pornography,^[38][43] and computer hacking and wiretapping.^[44]

• Anthony Stancl of Wisconsin, then 18, received 15 years in prison in February 2010 after he posed as a girl on Facebook to trick male high school classmates into sending him nude cell phone photos, which he then used to extort them for homosexual sex.^[38]
• Jonathan Vance of Auburn, Alabama, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in April 2010 after sending threatening e-mails on Facebook and MySpace extorting nude photos from more than 50 women in three states.^[16]
• Luis Mijangos was sentenced to six years in prison in September 2011 for hacking into dozens of computers, stealing personal information and demanding naked images from female victims in exchange for not releasing the stolen information. Forty-four of the victims were under age 18.^[45]
• Isaac Baichu, a federal immigration officer in New York, was sentenced to 1+1⁄2 to 4+1⁄2 years in prison in July 2010 after demanding sex from a 22-year-old Colombian woman in exchange for a green card.^[42]
• Steve Ellis, an immigration adjudicator in Toronto, was sentenced to 18 months in jail in July 2010 after telling a South Korean woman he would approve her refugee claim in exchange for sex.^[40]
• Michael Ngilangwa, a secondary school teacher in Tanzania, was sentenced to pay a fine or serve one year in prison in June 2011 after demanding sexual favors from his student in exchange for favorable exam results.^[41]
• Christopher Patrick Gunn, 31, of Montgomery, Alabama was indicted for using fake Facebook profiles to extort nude photos and videos from underage girls in numerous states.^[43] He got 35 years in federal prison after being convicted.^[46]
• In May 2010, the police of the Basque Country in Spain arrested a 24-year-old man accused of blackmailing a woman he met on an online chatroom and threatening to distribute nude photographs of her from her webcam.^[47]
• A video of the former Chinese Communist Party official Lei Zhengfu having sex with a woman was a part of a sextortion plot by a criminal gang.^[48][49]He was dismissed from his position as Chinese Communist Party Committee Secretary of Beibei, Chongqing and detained by the police a few days after. Additionally, the Party expelled him in early May. Subsequently, he was given a 13 year prison sentence for bribery.^[50]
• Aydin Coban was jailed for 6 years for the suicide of Amanda Todd.^[51]
• In 2013, Daniel Perry committed suicide hours after falling victim to webcam blackmail.^[52]
• Anton Martynenko was sentenced to 38 years in a federal prison, after victimizing over 155 teenage boys by making around 50 fake accounts on Facebook, often those of young women, to convince the victims to send him nude photos.^[53] The accounts were also used to spread the explicit photos and videos of the victims to their high school classmates, with one boy's photos being sold on the dark web. In addition, three boys were blackmailed into meeting up with Martynenko and performing sex acts with him; two of the victims later committed suicide. Martynenko is considered the largest producer of child pornography in Minnesota history.^[54]
• Jared Abrahams was sentenced to 18 months in jail^[55] after using Google Dorking ^[56] to commit sextortion crimes against Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf along with around 150 other women.
• Main article: United States v. Ogoshi
  Samuel Ogoshi, 22, Samson Ogoshi, 20, and Ezekiel Ejehem Robert, 19, who are residents of Lagos, Nigeria reportedly targeted hundreds of teenagers and adults in the United States posing as young women whose accounts had been hacked on Instagram. The three men would reportedly ask for nude pictures and then threaten to release the photos unless the victim paid them money. One victim, Jordan DeMay, 17, of Michigan, committed suicide after they threatened to release a nude photo of him if he failed to pay them $1,000 US, prompting the United States to file the proper motions to extradite them. Their cases are pending and they face over thirty years in prison if convicted.^[57][58] It was reported in August 2023 that Samuel and Samson Ogoshi, brothers, had been extradited to the United States and had gone before a federal judge in Grand Rapids, Michigan.^[59] The Ogoshi brothers pled guilty to sexually extorting teenage boys and young men in April 2024, and were sentenced to 17.5 years in prison in September 2024.^[60][61] U.S. attorney for the Western District of Michigan Mark Totten stated: “[The] guilty pleas represent an extraordinary success in the prosecution of international sextortion. These convictions will send a message to criminals in Nigeria and every corner of the globe: working with our partners both here and overseas, we can find you and we can bring you to justice.”^[62]
• Rubén Oswaldo Yeverino Rosales was sentenced to 34 years for extorting over 100 victims.^[63]

See also

• Advance-fee scam – Type of confidence trick fraud
  • Pig butchering scam – Type of investment fraud
  • Romance scam – Confidence trick using romantic intentions
• Cybercrime – Type of crime based in computer networks
  • Internet fraud – Fraud or deception using the Internet
  • Phishing – Form of social engineering
  • Social engineering (security) – Psychological manipulation of people into performing actions or divulging confidential information
• Cryptocurrency and crime
  • High-yield investment program – Type of Ponzi scheme
  • Pump and dump – Form of securities fraud