Behind the Scenes: How NCMEC identified new sextortion crisis

Hayley Elizondo could sense the teenager’s desperation on the phone, hear the fear in his voice.

The boy, who reached out to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) for help in April 2023, was in the throes of a new kind of online crime. It wasn’t the first time Hayley, who oversees the team that handles public reports to our CyberTipline, had seen this. Not by a long shot. 

The teenager told Hayley that he’d met someone on Snapchat who he thought was a nice girl. But it turned out to be a blackmailer who threatened to post nude images of him on his Instagram account and ruin his life – unless he paid $1,000.

“More than a year earlier, I started seeing a lot of reports like this, talking to a lot of kids who were very scared,” said Hayley. “At the time, I wondered, ‘Is this just me?’”

It wasn’t. In early 2022, Hayley began comparing notes with her colleagues in the Exploited Children Division and they recalled handling similar reports. Hayley and her team suspected then they were witnessing an alarming new crime trend, a different kind of sextortion – financial sextortion – in which the motive was money and the targets were primarily teenaged boys. Up until this point, the targets were girls and the motive in sextortion cases was to get more explicit photos through blackmail, not money.

Hayley works at her desk in the NCMEC office. (Photos: Sarah Baker, NCMEC)

Hayley alerted her supervisors, and “we took an all-hands-on-deck approach,” she said. Her team began tracking financial sextortion and analyzing the reports to help law enforcement investigate them: How much money was typically involved? How was it being paid? Were similar usernames being used? Did the blackmailers demand more money if a payment was made?

The blackmailers all had the same M.O.: increasingly aggressive threats. The intense pressure they put on their young targets made many feel there was no escape, causing extreme distress, even suicide. 

By the end of that first year, in 2022, NCMEC’s CyberTipline had received 10,731 financial sextortion reports. As the number of suicides kept climbing, NCMEC, the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations sounded the alarm, issuing a national public safety alert to warn families. 

So far, more than 20 suicides in the U.S. have been linked to financial sextortion, but it's likely that number is higher. The reason someone is driven to suicide is not always apparent, and these suicides happened very quickly. In many cases, the teenagers took their lives within hours after they were targeted by blackmailers.

The number of financial sextortion reports is still growing rapidly. In 2023, the teenager’s CyberTipline report was one of 26,718. Already this year, the number of reports is on track to surpass that number. In addition to warning the public, NCMEC alerted electronic service providers (ESPs), who submit the vast majority of reports, to be on the lookout for this new type of sextortion having a devastating emotional impact on children. 

By operating the CyberTipline, the centralized mechanism in the U.S. for reporting suspected online child sexual exploitation, NCMEC is in a unique position to spot evolving crimes against children, just as Hayley and her team did. 

Hayley’s ability to see similarities in an avalanche of reports – more than 265,000 reports from the public last year alone, and more than 36 million from ESPs – enabled NCMEC to respond quickly, said Lauren Coffren, executive director of the Exploited Children Division. 

“With millions of reports of suspected child sexual exploitation sent to NCMEC each year, our staff is on the frontlines,” said Coffren. “By spotting new trends, they can help many more children and families.”

When that teenager in 2023 made a CyberTipline report and was connected to Hayley, his story was very familiar to her. She assured him he was not the only kid being targeted by blackmailers. “Remember, you are not alone, and you’ve done a very brave thing reaching out to us,” she told him. 

He told her how he’d met the person he thought was a girl. They exchanged images containing nudity on Snapchat. Then the blackmailer dropped his cover and began aggressively texting the teenager on his Gmail account. The blackmailer threatened to share the images on the teenager’s Instagram account and with magazines and newspapers.

“I’m nervous to tell my mom,” the teenager told Hayley, fearing he’d get in trouble. “Do you think I should tell my mom?”

Hayley told him he did the right thing by not paying any money, reporting it to the CyberTipline and having a friend help him remove the images online through the “Take It Down” process described on our website.

Take It Down is a free service that helps you remove nude, partially nude or sexually explicit images posted online. 

Hayley told him his case had been made available to law enforcement and to make sure not to delete his online profile and texts, which could help their investigation. She told him it would be a good idea to tell his mom, and she’d join him in that conversation if he wanted.

Later, when he called Hayley back, the boy seemed calmer, much to her relief. He was relieved he wasn’t going through this alone and said he was ready to tell his mom.

“He said he could do it by himself and would be okay,” Hayley said. “He said he had his dog with him.”

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For more information about sextortion, please visit our blog on what parents should know about sextortion.

Visit No Escape Room, an interactive video that helps parents understand online enticement and sextortion.