National Crime Agency threatens extraditions due to rise in sextortion cases | Cybercrime

The National Crime Agency (NCA) has warned international cybercriminals that it may seek their extradition as part of its action to combat the alarming increase in the number of young people falling victim to sextortion.

The agency said the gangs, often based in West Africa, were “not safe from prosecution in our country” and that it would work to ensure justice for all victims of these crimes.

Sextortion involves young people being tricked online into sending intimate pictures of themselves to scammers who then demand money and threaten to pass the material on to others.

As The Guardian has learned, detailed instructions on sextortion are available free of charge on the Internet in written form and as videos. The criminals also offer one-on-one lessons for an additional fee.

The NCA said it would introduce a new recording measure to assess the scale of a crime described by child protection charity Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) as “the biggest trend we have ever seen and one of the cruelest”.

Sextortion has been linked to the deaths of at least two British teenagers in recent years. Dinal De Alwis, a 16-year-old from south London, described by his parents as the “golden boy”, took his own life after being blackmailed with nude photos.

Murray Dowey, 16, from Dunblane, died shortly after falling victim to online blackmailers. His parents told the Guardian that their family had been “completely destroyed within a matter of hours”.

Organisations supporting victims are calling on the Labour government and crime authorities to prioritise sex racketeering to prevent “even more lives being destroyed”.

The IWF, which monitors online child sexual abuse material (CSAM), said there was a 19% increase in reports of child sexual abuse material related to financial sextortion in the first six months of this year compared to the previous year.

There were 89 confirmed reports of sextortion-related content involving under-18s, compared to 75 in the same period in 2023. The data shows an increase in the number of female victims from one last year to 27 in 2024, while the number of boys – who are typically more likely to be victims of sextortion cases – fell by 12% to 61.

Tamsin McNally, head of the IMF's hotline where citizens can report suspected cases of CSAM, said the reason for the increase is probably because “the perpetrators have become more sophisticated at what they do. They are widening their nets because they know they can make money from it.”

Most of the cases the IMF investigates fall into the lowest category of CSAM, Category C. The age group most affected was 16-17 year olds, with 45 victims. The biggest increase was among 14-15 year olds, where the number rose by a quarter to 40.

McNally said: “Sextortion is the biggest trend we have ever seen and one of the cruelest. I see it every day and the hotline receives international reports, including from the UK.”

According to the NCA, West Africa, and Nigeria in particular, has become a hub for sextortion gangs. In early June, the agency invited Nigeria's National Cyber ​​Crime Centre (NCCC) to a four-day visit to London, where they discussed fraud and a range of cybercrimes, including sextortion.

Nigerian authorities have taken action: In August 2023, two Nigerian men were extradited to the United States on charges of online extortion and their alleged involvement in the suicide of 17-year-old Jordan DeMay of Michigan. And earlier this year, two men were charged in Nigeria for the alleged sexual extortion of a 16-year-old Australian boy who committed suicide last year.

Adam Priestley, a senior manager at the NCA, said extradition was not the only option and authorities could work with foreign law enforcement agencies to bring offenders to justice in their home countries.

“It is the NCA's aim to work with UK and international partners to achieve a legal outcome,” he said. “Particularly where a young person has died, we aim for a legal outcome that fairly reflects the seriousness of the crime. If you offend people in the UK, that's what happens. In our country, you are not safe from prosecution.”

The NCA acknowledged that it remains difficult to accurately assess the extent of sextortion as it encompasses various recording categories such as extortion and fraud. The agency now plans to introduce a separate category for recording sextortion cases.

Sean Sutton, another senior manager at the NCA, said: “We are in the process of agreeing the use of a code word to be used across all law enforcement agencies to better track the scale of this threat and better coordinate our response to it in the future.”

The Guardian has seen evidence of the international scale of this crime, provided by the perpetrators themselves. In a written guide that is more than 80 pages long, the author claims that the three countries where online blackmail is most successful are the UK, the US and Canada. He advises the reader to focus on teenagers and young adults, pointing out that they can expect to receive sexually explicit content “from at least 5-10 out of 200 targets”.

Sophie Mortimer, head of the Revenge Porn Helpline, which supports over-18s with a range of online abuse cases, said cases of sextortion had increased “massively” since the helpline was set up nine years ago. She expressed frustration that the issue had “only relatively recently become a priority for the NCA”.

She said: “Lives are being destroyed. We need more political will to tackle these problems. We know that the money is going abroad, and it's going to the same countries over and over again. It's going to the Philippines, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Morocco. My big demand to the new Labour government and the top police officials is to finally do something.”