Tag: scam crisis
Sextortion racket triggers US youth suicides
Financial sextortion is now the most rapidly growing crime targeting American, Canadian, and Australian youth. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has called it: “a global crisis that demands everyone’s attention” - having observed a one thousand percent increase in financial sextortion incidents over the last 18 months. In a December 2023 hearing, FBI Director Wray warned Congress that sextortion is “a rapidly escalating threat,” and teenage victims “don’t know where to turn.” Almost all this activity is linked to West African cybercriminals known as the “Yahoo Boys”, who primarily target English-speaking minors and young adults on the online social networks: Instagram, Snapchat, and Wizz, according to the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) report, “A Digital Pandemic: Uncovering the role of ‘Yahoo Boys’ in the Surge of Social Media-enabled Financial Sextortion Targeting Minors.