FinCEN warns of surge in financially motivated sextortion

• Key insight: While anyone can become a victim of sextortion, the schemes often target boys aged 14 to 17.
• What's at stake: The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reports that at least 36 teenagers have taken their own lives since 2021 due to the threat of their explicit images being leaked.
• Expert quote: "The trauma level we see with these kids is significant," said Catherine Connell, an FBI program manager.

Overview bullets generated by AI with editorial review

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued on Monday a notice alerting U.S. financial institutions that reports of financially motivated sextortion schemes have sharply increased.

Financially motivated sextortion occurs when perpetrators, using fake online personas, coerce victims into creating and sending sexually explicit images or videos of themselves. They then threaten to release this compromising material to the victim's friends and family unless the victim makes a payment.

FinCEN urged banks and credit unions to play an active role in preventing further victimization and supporting ongoing law enforcement investigations by reporting suspicious activity potentially related to such schemes.

While anyone can become a victim of sextortion, the schemes increasingly target minors, especially boys aged 14 to 17, according to the FBI.

Perpetrators often initiate contact on social media or gaming platforms, posing as attractive peers or taking over legitimate accounts. They quickly build rapport, learn about victims through their social media profiles, and persuade them to move conversations to private messaging or video chat applications.

Once they obtain explicit material, or even just photos or videos of the victim's face, they begin demanding payment. In some instances, when a potential victim refuses to send sexually explicit material, perpetrators create realistic, explicit deepfake images or videos using the victim's likeness from their social media content to use in their threats.

"The people who commit this crime have studied how to reach and target children and teens," the FBI said on its website.

Perpetrators demand payment in various forms, including gift cards, mobile payment services, wire transfers or virtual assets. They often continue to harass victims for additional payments even after receiving an initial sum.

Numerous resources exist to help victims prevent the dissemination of explicit material, even in cases where the victim is 18 or older.

The FBI, FinCEN, victim advocates and others implore victims to immediately stop communication with the predator and not to send payment.

Alarming scale and devastating impact

Counts of the total toll of sextortion — number of cases, number of related deaths, and total cost to victims — vary.

The FBI received nearly 55,000 reports of sextortion and extortion in 2024. Meanwhile, Homeland Security Investigations, a law enforcement arm of the similarly named department, received 8,483 tips related to sextortion between October 2021 and July 2025, leading to 854 victim identifications.

The FBI identified at least 20 victims aged 17 or younger who died by suicide after a sextortion incident from October 2021 to March 2023. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reports that at least 36 teenagers have taken their own lives since 2021 due to the threat of their explicit images being leaked.

Sextortion also led to $33.5 million in financial losses in 2024, a 59% increase in reports from 2023, according to FBI data.

Victims frequently experience profound shame, fear, hopelessness and isolation — all feelings that perpetrators exploit. "The trauma level we see with these kids is significant," said Catherine Connell, an FBI program manager, said in a press release.

Perpetrators often operate from outside the United States, predominantly in West African countries like Benin, Cote d'Ivoire and Nigeria, and Southeast Asian countries such as the Philippines, according to the FBI. They primarily target victims in English-speaking countries.

Role of money mules in laundering proceeds

As with other financially motivated crimes, perpetrators heavily rely on networks of money mules to launder victim payments, creating layers of distance between themselves and their victims.

Sextorters may recruit these mules through job advertisements or social media. Sometimes mules are knowingly complicit, other times they are unwittingly involved. Complicit money mules typically keep a percentage, often 20%, of the funds they move.

In many cases, victims are coerced to act as money mules for their extortionists. In a 2023 case, a joint effort by the Australian government and a nonprofit disrupted a money laundering operation in which they found money mules were often vulnerable individuals, some themselves victims of romance scams.

Criminals then exploited these victims by forcing them to move money on their behalf, enabling a range of higher-value fraud crimes.

Real-world tragedies

In August 2024, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Western Michigan announced charges against five people for a money laundering conspiracy that facilitated a foreign sextortion scheme that had led to the death by suicide of 17-year-old high school student Jordan DeMay.

Nigerian brothers Samuel and Samson Ogoshi admitted they used hacked social media accounts, posed as young women, conducted online research on victims and created collages of explicit images with victims' school and family photos. They blackmailed victims for money via online cash applications.

DeMay sent $300 through a cash application to one of the money launderers, who then converted it to bitcoin for someone in Nigeria, who ultimately sent funds to the sextortionists.

The Ogoshi brothers received 17.5-year prison sentences.

In a similar case in February 2022, 17-year-old Ryan Last of San Jose, California, died by suicide hours after Alfred Kassi, a citizen of Cote d'Ivoire, sextorted him online while pretending to be a 20-year-old woman.

Kassi and money laundering accomplices helped move the $150 payment Last made to prevent image dissemination. Ivorian authorities arrested Kassi and other individuals involved in the sextortion network.

Prosecutors have detailed numerous similar cases across the U.S., including a $1.9-million scheme in Delaware and a 2024 case in Aurora, Colorado, uncovered by high school journalists.

FinCEN's directives for financial institutions

FinCEN emphasized in its Monday announcement the critical role financial institutions play in identifying and stopping sextortion, among many other financially motivated crimes.

When filing Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), FinCEN requests institutions follow specific instructions to enhance intelligence and investigative efforts:

• Reference the Monday notice by including the key term "FIN-2025-SEXTORTION" in SAR Field 2 (Filing Institution Note to FinCEN) and in the narrative.
• Select SAR Field 38(z) (Other) as the associated suspicious activity type and include the term "SEXTORTION" in the text box.
• If known, enter the subject's IP address in SAR Field 43.
• Include all available information regarding the accounts, locations, legal entities, associated beneficial owners, and other domestic and foreign financial institutions involved in the activity. Financial institutions should also consider filing SARs jointly on shared suspicious activity when appropriate.
• FinCEN also strongly encourages voluntary information sharing among financial institutions under the safe harbor provisions of Section 314(b) of the USA
  PATRIOT Act.

Red flag indicators to watch for

FinCEN identified key red flag indicators to help financial institutions detect potential financially motivated sextortion:

• A customer, especially a minor or young adult, makes a series of payments over a short period via P2P payment platforms to a recipient in a so-called "jurisdiction of concern" (for example, Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria, Philippines or Benin) with no apparent personal connection to that area.
• A customer makes a series of low, round dollar amount P2P transfers (e.g., $10-$50) aggregating to hundreds of dollars or less over a short period to individuals with whom they have no prior transaction relationship. The recipient of these funds then rapidly transfers them via P2P to other accounts.
• Payments include memos indicating extortion (e.g., "delete the pictures," "please stop"), often occurring during late night and early morning hours.
• Benign or charitable references (e.g., "for orphans," "for family") in payment memos may indicate attempts to evade scrutiny.
• Transactions between two individuals where no apparent relationship exists (e.g., no common surname, no clear business purpose).
• The transaction recipient (predator) is not local to the remitter (victim).
• The remitter does not enter a payee name, or enters one that does not match the actual account holder.

FinCEN said no single red flag is definitive, but a combination of indicators, along with a customer's historical financial activity and prevailing business practices, can signal suspicious activity.

What victims can do

Victims of financially motivated sextortion should immediately report the activity to law enforcement and should never send money. Cooperating with extorters rarely stops the blackmail, according to the FBI.

• Victims should contact their local FBI field office, call 1-800-CALL-FBI, or report online at tips.fbi.gov. For more information, visit fbi.gov/sextortion and fbi.gov/financialsextortion.
• Report sextortion to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), a nonprofit, via report.cybertip.org or call 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678). NCMEC also offers a takedown service to help remove online explicit images of minors.
• In cases where a sexploiter has published explicit images of adult victims (anyone who was 18 or older at the time), StopNCII.org assists with takedowns.
• The Department of Homeland Security offers victim assistance via 833-591-KNOW (5669).
• For victims experiencing a mental health crisis, including thoughts of suicide, dial or text 988 for 24-hour confidential assistance.

FinCEN's alert underscores the urgent need for financial institutions to reinforce their AML/CFT programs, train staff on these evolving typologies, and collaborate closely with law enforcement to protect vulnerable individuals from this devastating crime.