‘Sextortion’ on the rise among Northeast Florida youngsters

With school back in full force in Northeast Florida, so are those who threaten students online or cajole them to send explicit images of themselves for later “sextortion,” say local and federal law enforcement officials.

FBI Jacksonville reports a 60% increase in sextortion complaints filed with its Internet Crime Complaint Center across the state for the first seven months of this year, already matching last year’s totals, Special Agent in Charge Jason Carley said.

The agency joined local law enforcement Tuesday to alert parents, guardians and school leaders about warning signs and steps to protect children online.

“We do a lot of outreach events, like our Be Smart With Your Cellphone program,” Carley said. “That goes out to the school districts and talks to parents to answer questions and make them aware, to give them a better sense of the threats that exist out there online and leave some of their children to be exploited.”

Duval County Public Schools Police Chief Jackson Short said programs like See Something, Say Something help keep students safe at school. But more must be done to keep children safe on nights and weekends, he said.

Article continues below

More from Jax Today

Jacksonville’s own Eiffel Tower can be yours — for a day

Taxing district considered for Five Points improvements

Developer plans another community in Clay County

Jacksonville Today thanks our sponsors. Become one.

So far this year, there has been no “significant uptick” in these kinds of threats, but law enforcement needs parents’ help, he said.

“Keeping the parents engaged, knowing what their students are doing online, checking their cellphones and their friends, and just being engaged is going to be what helps us stay ahead of it and prevent a problem,” he said.

Sextortion can start on any site, app, messaging platform or game where people meet and communicate, the FBI said. Online networks also target vulnerable teens, coercing them into producing and sharing extreme violent or child sexual abuse content, Carley said. 

“They persuade them and manipulate them to do self-inflicted harm. They also encourage those victims to do harm upon others,” Carley said. “We also have our sextortion predators out there who persuade kids to provide photos of themselves, which they then get extorted, and are used to try to get money from them — they try to get that from the parents.”

In 2021, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s CyberTipline received 44,155 reports of online enticement of a child. In 2022, the number increased by 82% to 80,524.

That number included over 7,000 reports of financially motivated sextortion of minors, according to the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations.

The FBI also received reports in 2022 of more than 20 minors who died by suicide after falling victim to these predators, the agency reports.

FBI Jacksonville works with school districts, sheriff’s offices and police departments in Jacksonville as well as St. Johns, Putnam and other local counties on cases that involve sextortion or online threats. But Carley said they continue to see increases in those threats after “very high” numbers in 2024.

“They will unfortunately continue to increase,” he said. “These online predators — it’s a way for them to make money off exploiting our children, taking advantage of their innocence.”

St. Johns County has 52,000 public school students, and 65 resource deputies in their schools, Sheriff Rob Hardwick said. He also has two threat assessment detectives to investigate issues including online threats or sextortion. So far this year, his department has received 440 tips.

While cellphones can be good for the children, there is a darker side, Hardwick said.

“Our children, our families, have complete access to the world. But the world has complete access to our children,” Hardwick said.

Safety tips

Law enforcement offered these tips to keep children safe:

• Look for red flags like behavior changes that could indicate online exploitation or cyberbullying.
• Monitor children’s use of online services. Monitor the information they access on the internet.
• Consider credit or identity theft monitoring.
• Talk to children about their online activities and what games they play.
• Get regular software updates to help stop security breaches, and keep all text, email and other message interactions as evidence. Do not delete messages from online threateners, because that is evidence for law enforcement investigations.
• Do not provide detailed information about children when creating user profiles.
• Check out the FBI Safe Online Surfing Internet Challenge, which includes lessons ranging from password security to safeguarding personal information, identifying online predators and more.
• Additional resources include the FBI Sextortion information page and the #ThinkBeforeYouPost Campaign.

Anyone with information about a child victim of a crime can go to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, contact FBI Jacksonville at (904)-248-7000 or call their local police agency.

FBI Jacksonville will host its next “Be Smart With Your Kids’ Smartphone” program on Nov. 6. The time and location have not been determined.