Children and youths are increasingly being blackmailed with sexually explicit photos and videos that they have made of themselves, according to Finland's National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).
Typical blackmail cases start with criminals who claim to be young women, asking their child victims to send them explicit photos or videos of themselves.
After they get the videos or photographs, the criminals then blackmail the victims into sending them money — or some other demand — under the threat of sharing the materials on social media, police explained in a press release on Thursday.
The number of such cases has grown considerably in recent years. For example, between the years of 2019 and 2021, there were a total of nine such cases reported to the police.
However, during the first nine months of this year, Finnish police received 101 criminal complaints about suspected online blackmail of that nature.
Last year, there were 73 similar criminal reports, 77 in 2023, and 30 the year before that, according to police.
As a rule, in terms of sexual crimes against minors, girls are targeted more often than boys, police explained, but sexual extortion for financial gain is an exception to that rule.
Boys victim in 94% of cases
In the cases that police are aware of, 94 percent of the victims were boys — usually over the age of 13. More than 80 percent of the cases dealt with victims between the ages of 14 and 17.
According to police, the victims are usually targeted on social media platforms popular with children and youths.
"The extortion is often carried out by professional criminals and the activities are organised. In most cases, the perpetrator is likely to operate abroad. This is consistent with observations made by international authorities," Detective Inspector Jyri Hiltunen said in the press release.
The sums demanded by the extortionists commonly range from a few hundred up to thousands of euros.
However, the number of reported cases may not reflect the actual amount, according to the law enforcement agency.
The NBI presumes that a large proportion of the crimes do not get reported in cases when the victim has paid the extortionist.
However, paying the ransom is no guarantee that the blackmail will end — and police are urging victims to refuse to pay.
"If the perpetrator stopped the blackmail after being paid, the victim hasn't necessarily seen a need to report what happened. Paying the perpetrator also likely increases the child's sense of shame for having been a victim of sexual abuse, which in turn raises the threshold for reporting what happened to authorities," Hiltunen said.
The NBI said that if you suspect that you — or someone you know — has been the victim of such a crime to contact police. Criminal complaints can be filed at local police departments, or reports can be filed via the police's online tip form.
