Surge successful sextortion cases targeting teen boys
Surveillance camera footage from the lobby of a gathering down the thoroughfare from the U.S. Capitol provided a interruption successful the three-year hunt for the idiosyncratic who was extorting a young antheral from Buffalo, New York.
Cross Cole, a 21-year-old national of Ghana, who is linked to a 2022 enactment astatine a rental spot successful Washington, D.C., was charged past week with the sextortion scheme.
Surveillance camera footage from the lobby of a gathering down the thoroughfare from the U.S. Capitol provided a interruption successful the three-year hunt for the idiosyncratic who was extorting a young antheral from Buffalo, New York.
Government exhibit
Cole's apprehension is portion of a increasing question of specified cases nationwide and illustrates the analyzable and planetary quality of these attacks.
Sextortion, successful which schemers endanger to merchandise illicit photos of victims unless the victims wage them, has surged nationwide.
An FBI affidavit reviewed by CBS News said Cole had obtained a bare photograph of the unfortunate from years earlier, erstwhile the unfortunate was a minor. Prosecutors besides alleged Cole had accessed a nude representation of the victim's friend, portion the person was besides a minor. The victim's email relationship was hacked, and his societal media relationship information was compromised, national prosecutors said.
"The unfortunate sent $200 to the CashApp relationship but cancelled the outgo aft speaking with his father," Michael Digiacomo, the U.S. lawyer for the Western District of New York, said successful a nationalist announcement astir the case. "He past continued to person aggregate substance messages from the aforesaid telephone fig that made the threats."
The affidavit reviewed by CBS News said agents yet tracked down an IP code linked to Capitol Hill successful Washington, D.C., that had accessed the victim's relationship successful October 2022. A information camera representation successful the affidavit allegedly shows Cole entering an AirBNB rental installation astatine the Capitol Hill code successful October 2022.
The affidavit said Cole's mother, who is besides a national of Ghana, had rented a abstraction successful the gathering done AirBNB that month. A justice has ordered Cole to beryllium detained, pending trial. His adjacent tribunal proceeding is scheduled for September successful Buffalo national court.
Safety experts and national instrumentality enforcement officials told CBS News that a increasing fig of these sextortion schemes are being executed by foreign nationals against children and young adults successful the U.S. FBI records obtained by CBS News amusement a astir 500% summation successful reports of sextortion since 2019.
The FBI and information groups person been trying to rise consciousness astir cases similar Cole's. Targets are progressively young men. Experts accidental these victims are little apt to study the incidents.
In immoderate of the newest question of sextortion cases, schemers lure children and young adults into sharing illicit photos by pretending to beryllium idiosyncratic who's astir the aforesaid age. In different cases, including the 1 described successful the charging documents against Cole, suspects are accused of hacking into the societal media accounts of victims to get the illicit images.
"These cases are similar thing we've ne'er seen before," said Lauren Coffen, manager of the Exploited Children Division astatine the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
"We are utilized to radical being capable to scope retired and prosecute and chat with children for intersexual reasons. They wanted the images, they wanted to beryllium capable to possibly conscionable up," Coffen told CBS News. "Now, they privation money. And that's a wholly antithetic motivator than what we're utilized to seeing successful exploitation."
"People person nary thought however targeted our teenage boys are close now," Pauline Stuart told CBS News.
Stuart's son, Ryan Last, died by termination hours aft a sextortion strategy was threatened against him successful 2022. The Justice Department says Last's decease showed the pervasiveness of planetary criminals successful sextortion schemes. In an announcement successful May, the section said 4 men successful Côte d'Ivoire had been arrested connected transgression charges related to their alleged relation successful an planetary sextortion strategy that targeted thousands of victims, including Last.
"The bittersweet world is this is not an uncommon event," said Digiacomo, whose bureau is prosecuting Cole's case. Though helium would not remark connected the details of the Cole investigation, Digiacomo said the pervasiveness of sextortion cases is troubling and mostly unrecognized by immoderate parents.
"Oftentimes successful these cases, determination are precise young victims," Digiacomo told CBS News, "The perpetrators volition accidental 'Just nonstop maine the pictures and I'll permission you alone.' And the victims deliberation (sending money) is the casual mode retired oregon the lone mode out."
Digiacomo and the National Center for Missing Exploited Children some told CBS News that the planetary constituent of the conspiracies complicates efforts to way down and halt sextorters.
According to the FBI affidavit successful Cole's case, agents connected an iCloud relationship to Cole that included a enactment listing aggregate Yahoo email addresses and passwords.
Scott MacFarlane is CBS News' Justice correspondent. He has covered Washington for 2 decades, earning 20 Emmy and Edward R. Murrow awards. His reporting has resulted straight successful the transition of 5 caller laws.
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