Local Law Enforcement Agencies Increase Awareness
Over the last year, federal and state law enforcement agencies have launched a campaign to increase awareness of crimes related to online sexual extortion. Many news sources across the country have reported that these types of extortion cases have increased over the last couple of years especially when they involve victims as minors.
Law enforcement officials have coined the term “sextortion” to describe crimes where sexually explicit photos sent over social media and the internet are used to extort money or sexual favors from the victims. The increase in cases can be seen on national and state levels, prompting local agencies to reach out to the community and give signs to look for.
The overall message is that parents need to closely monitor their children’s activities online. Increased awareness has contributed to an increase in arrests for these crimes because more people are willing to come out and report sextortion-related crimes.
Last year, the FBI announced that the number of sextortion cases involving children has been increasing since 2021. Fox 31 Denver reported last April that the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center tallied more than 18,000 total sextortion complaints with victims of all ages.
Last December, CNN reported that a safety alert was sent out by the Justice Department saying that financial sextortion cases involving minors have greatly increased from previous years. In 2021, there were over 3,000 cases of minors being targeted in sextortion schemes, and the majority of them were boys.
Online Sextortion Cases Increase Locally
Law enforcement agencies in Colorado have also seen an increase in these types of crimes with children especially being at risk to be victims. Last June, Denver 7 reported that the Homeland Security Investigation’s (HSI) Denver division received 25 tips related to sextortion cases in 2020. In the first five months of 2022, the agency had already received over 200 tips for similar crimes.
HSI supervisory agent Matt Peterson told Denver 7 that minors are often the main targets of the scammer suspects, but adults are sometimes also victims. “It seems like our cases have skyrocketed since COVID,” Peterson told Denver 7. “I think you have kids who were on the internet a lot more, they’re staying home. People in the workforce, these pedophiles and predators, are staying home more.”
Last October, the Woodland Park Police Department posted a report on social media from the Colorado Information Analysis Center (CIAC) about the growing trend of incidents of “sextortion” of minors. “With the increased use of social media platforms among our younger population of school-aged children, more and more of these types of cases are being seen around the country,” the police department stated in the post. “Please continue to be involved in your children’s use of electronics and social media and make them aware of the dangers lurking on the internet. Once an image hits the web, it lives forever!”
The CIAC report stated that the Pueblo Police Department found that half of their sextortion cases involved minor victims and that they anticipated the number of cases doubling from 2021 to 2022.
According to an article published by KRDO last June, Pueblo also saw nine cases of nude photos being posted without consent in 2021. In 2022, the department exceeded that number of complaints.
However, the article also reports that the number of cases could be higher because not every victim files a charge and sometimes sextortion crimes are reported under other categories. “The Internet Crime Against Children Task Force Program says only 13% of reported sextortion incidents are reported to law enforcement,” the article stated.
Sgt. Jason Garret with the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office said in an e-mail that it would be tough to get exact numbers of sextortion crimes as the office’s “law enforcement personnel process several tens of thousands of case reports each year.”
The El Paso County Sheriff’s Office’s public information officer Lt. Deborah Mynatt said that the sheriff’s office does have a deputy on a task force that is headed by the Colorado Springs Police Department to handle these types of crimes.
“There is an umbrella called the Metro Vice narcotics and Intelligence unit and underneath that there are different specialties,” Mynatt said. “There is one called the ‘internet crimes against children’ and there are also groups of investigators that deal specifically with human trafficking investigations.”
The Colorado Springs Police Department did not respond to multiple e-mails and phone calls for comment.
What Happens to Victims?
According to the report by the CIAC, the common method of communication between sex perpetrators and minor victims are online chats in applications like Instagram or Snapchat. During the interactions, the perpetrator convinces the victim to send sexually explicit images or videos. The perpetrator then attempts to blackmail the victim by threatening to send the images or videos to everyone on their friends and family lists on social media.
In some cases, mainly males between 14 and 17, the perpetrator demands that the victim pay or they will share the picture. In other cases, with most victims being females between the ages of 13 and 15, the perpetrator demands that the victim send more images or videos to keep them from sharing the original images. The perpetrator then sells the images or videos.
In more severe cases, the perpetrator progresses from wanting images or videos to demanding sex from the victim to keep them from sharing the photos/videos. However, the report also stated that more victims have been coming forward and reporting these cases to law enforcement officials.
The Safe2Tell program provides an anonymous venue for parents, students, teachers, school administrators, and law enforcement to share information. Victims can anonymously report sextortion cases to Safe2Tell by visiting their website at Safe2Tell.org, calling 1-877-509-2422, or by downloading the Safe2Tell Colorado mobile app.
