West African gangs who blackmail teenagers over nude images could be extradited to UK
West African gangs who blackmail teenagers over nude images could be extradited under a crackdown on cyber criminals, the National Crime Agency has said.
The organisation said that gangs were “not safe from prosecution in our country” and that it would seek justice for all victims of sextortion.
Under the crime, teenagers are duped into sending intimate pictures of themselves to fraudsters online who then threaten to share them with others if victims do not hand over money.
The crime has been described by internet watchdogs as “the biggest trend we’ve seen and one of the cruellest”.
The NCA is planning to introduce a new recording measure to assess the extent of the problem.
Criminals to be brought to justice
Adam Priestley, a senior manager at the National Crime Agency, told The Guardian extradition was not the only option and that they may work with law enforcement abroad to bring criminals to justice at home.
“It is the ambition of the NCA to work together with UK and international partners to achieve a judicial outcome,” he said.
“In particular, where a young person has died, we strive for a judicial outcome that adequately reflects the severity of the crime. If you offend against people in the UK, this is what happens. You are not safe from prosecution in our country.”
The NCA believes West Africa, particularly Nigeria, is a hub for the gangs and earlier this year hosted a four-day visit from Nigeria’s National Cyber Crime Centre to London.
The agency is planning to introduce a specific category for recording sextortion cases after acknowledging that it remained challenging to accurately estimate the scale of sextortion because it could be logged under different offences, such as blackmail and fraud.
NCA to coordinate a better response
Sean Sutton, another NCA senior manager, added: “We are in the processes of agreeing the use of one codeword to use across law enforcement to help track the scale and better coordinate our response to this threat moving forward.”
Sextortion has been implicated in the deaths of at least two teenagers in Britain in recent years.
Dinal De Alwis, 16, from south London, took his own life after being blackmailed over nude photographs while Murray Dowey, 16, from Dunblane, died soon after he was targeted by online blackmailers.
The Internet Watch Foundation has found there was a 19 per cent increase in reports of child sexual abuse material related to financial sextortion in the first six months of this year, compared with 2023.
It received 89 confirmed reports of sextortion-related content involving under-18s, in contrast with 75 in the same period last year.
The number of female victims has increased from one last year to 27, while then number of boys, who are more often targeted, fell by 12 per cent to 61.
‘The biggest trend and one of the cruellest’
Tamsin McNally, the manager of the IWF’s hotline, said the reason for the rise was probably that “now perpetrators have become more adept at what they are doing, they are widening their nets because they know they can make money”.
According to the charity, the most affected age group was 16-17, with 45 victims, and the biggest increase was in 14- to 15-year-olds, up by a quarter to 40.
“Sextortion is the biggest trend we’ve seen and one of the cruellest,” Ms McNally said. “It’s something I see on a daily basis, with reports coming to the hotline internationally as well as from the UK.”
Nigerian authorities have been assisting with the crackdown and last year, two Nigerian men were extradited to the US in to face charges relating to online extortion and their alleged part in the suicide of 17-year-old Jordan DeMay from Michigan.
Two men were also charged earlier this year over the alleged sexual extortion of a 16-year-old Australian boy who took his own life.
Cyber criminals have been writing guides online, with The Guardian reporting that one ran to more than 80 pages and claims the top three countries in which to commit successful online extortion are Britain, the US and Canada.
The guide advises others to focus on teenagers and young adults and suggests the criminals will receive sexually explicit content “from at least 5-10 targets out of 200”.
Sophie Mortimer, the manager of the Revenge Porn Helpline, said sextortion cases had increased “massively” since the support line was launched nine years ago.
“Lives are being devastated. We need to see more political will about tackling these issues. We know the money is going abroad, and it’s going to the same countries again and again.
“It’s going to the Philippines, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Morocco. My big ask of the new Labour government and senior police officers is to start taking some action.”