The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has announced the arrest of 22 Nigerians allegedly involved in a sextortion ring blamed for the suicides of more than 20 teenagers across the United States since 2021.
In a statement published late Friday, April 24, the agency revealed that the arrests were the result of Operation Artemis, a first-of-its-kind global crackdown on financially motivated sextortion crimes. The operation was conducted in collaboration with law enforcement agencies from Canada, Australia, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom.
According to the FBI, Operation Artemis was launched nearly two years ago following a surge in reports of teen boys being manipulated into sharing explicit photos online and subsequently extorted with threats of exposure unless payments were made.
“As a result of Operation Artemis, FBI investigations led to the arrest of 22 Nigerian subjects, with at least one arrest linked to an American victim who took their own life,” the FBI stated.
The agency explained that in these sextortion schemes, minors, mostly boys, are lured online by individuals posing as young women. After persuading them to send nude photographs, the scammers demand money to keep the images private. Investigators noted that even when victims paid, the extortion often continued, with threats escalating over time.
“Analysis of victims’ phones and social media accounts revealed heartbreaking narratives of young kids enduring panicked negotiations in bids to maintain their privacy,” the FBI added.
The scale of the problem has grown dramatically. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported over 34,000 sextortion victims in 2023, a figure that soared to more than 54,000 last year, resulting in nearly $65 million in financial losses over the past two years.
From October 2021 to March 2023, the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) recorded more than 12,600 minors, mainly boys targeted in sextortion schemes. NCMEC also reported a sharp rise in financial sextortion cases, with 26,718 reports received in 2023, up from 10,731 in 2022.
Australia’s Federal Police similarly reported approximately 300 new sextortion cases each month.
In Nigeria, FBI Special Agent Matthew Crowley conducted interviews with suspects to uncover why they shifted focus to sextortion over other forms of financial scams such as romance fraud or business email compromise.
“One subject said, ‘It’s easy money. I can just move on to the next one if I don’t get any traction,” Crowley reported.
“It makes sense why they would go that route because they could target 40 victims in a day working multiple at a time. And maybe of those 40, three pay. But if three paid $200, that’s $600,” she explained.
The devastating human toll of these schemes was underscored by the testimony of an American father, whose 16-year-old son took his own life in 2023 after being victimized by sextortionists.
“Everything that he loved, every college ambition he had, every girl he liked, every friend he had those things were all threatened right then,” the grieving father said. “Imagine somebody walking into your home in the middle of the night and shooting your son. Well, this person did something even worse than that. He scared him so bad that he shot himself.”
The FBI urged parents, educators, and guardians to educate young people about online dangers and to report any suspicious activities immediately.
