Thirty-eight teenage boys in the US have died by suicide since 2021 after falling victim to “sextortion” scammers, a top cybercrimes investigator has told The Post.
Two networks have been identified as the main ones behind the sick schemes: Nigeria’s Yahoo Boys, who do it for profit, and the US-Europe-centered 764 gang, who are, more worryingly, sexual sadists, according to Paul Raffile, who has personally investigated many of the suicides.
“These criminals can add 100 kids [per] Instagram account and hope that 30 accept the friend request and hope that 10 actually engage with them. So it’s really a numbers game,” Raffile told The Post, adding the Nigerian operation has thousands of members.
Michigan teen Jordan DeMay, 17, committed suicide in 2022 after he was sextorted by two Nigerian brothers, who were later extradited to the US and sentenced to 17 years in prison.
Waylon Scheffer of Montana committed suicide in 2022 after the 16-year-old was tormented by a sextortion scam.
“Law enforcement needs to get ahead of this before teen suicides, not after.”
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said in May that it receives almost 100 …
One cannot hate people who prey on kids like this enough.
“Cybercrimes experts and law enforcement say protecting teenagers from these scams starts at home with teens having social media accounts set to private and with parents educating their children about sextortion threats.”
Where it has always been the best place to start, if the parents are interested in their children’s lives.
Sorry, but parents are to blame. Irony is, when something happens, they blame society and the system to be “broken.”
Parents give their kids tablets and phones barely out of diapers.
In another context, that same behavior (sending a nude to someone over the internet) could land someone on the sex offense registry. Odd how one can be both victim and potential criminal with the same act. Society and laws really need to grapple with these realities, instead of using the hammer of the law to fix what is ultimately a moral issue that would be best handled in a more nuanced way.