Young men and boys as young as 11 are being increasingly targeted by “sextortion” cybercrime rackets, the National Crime Agency has said. Four men have killed themselves in the past 12 months after being convinced to perform sexual acts on webcams by criminals using false identities, and then blackmailed.
The number of people reporting webcam blackmails has more than doubled from 385 in 2015 to 864 so far this year, and it is believed that the crime may be severely under-reported. There were nine reports of the offence in 2011.
The NCA and National Police Chiefs’ Council have launched a campaign to tackle the “really worrying emerging threat”, said the Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Martin Hewitt, the lead for kidnap and extortion, and adult sexual offences.
“The really key point is that as a result of this criminality, we have had four young men in the United Kingdom who have killed themselves because they saw no way out of a situation that they had got into,” he said. He added that police forces were being provided with more information to raise awareness of the crime and help them deal with victims.
Men between the ages of 21 and 30 are most likely to be targeted, but a “substantial proportion” are aged 11 to 20 and there have been victims as old as 82.
“Perhaps more important is a public awareness campaign to make not only potential victims, but all those around them – friends of potential victims, family members of potential victims – really aware of what is a very damaging and invidious crime,” Hewitt said.
The NCA has identified criminal gangs working from Morocco, Philippines and Ivory Coast, who target potential victims on websites such as Facebook, Skype or Linkedin, then persuade them to perform sexual acts that are recorded. The criminals then threaten to share the footage with family and friends unless the victim pays a bribe. In one case, the victim was told: “Your life is over, you may as well go and kill yourself.” The NCA’s advice to any potential victims is: “Do not panic, do not pay, do not communicate and preserve evidence.”
A 17-year-old boy from Northern Ireland killed himself last year after what his family described as a “relentless” campaign of online bullying by a gang. Ronan Hughes, from County Tyrone, was tricked into posting intimate photos online after receiving pictures of a girl. He was then blackmailed for £3,000 by the gang, who threatened to upload the images to his friends’ Facebook pages.
“This is being organised by well-equipped, often offshore organised crime groups that are facilitating this activity,” Hewitt said.
Last year, more than 40 arrests were made in Philippines and there is a continuing international prosecution connected to one of the deaths reported this year.
Roy Sinclair of the NCA said: “There is huge under-reporting of these kinds of offences, often because victims feel ashamed or embarrassed, but of course criminals are relying on that reaction in order to succeed.”
One male victim in his late teens said he had considered killing himself after being lured into exposing himself and showing his face on Skype. “I offered to go to the bank, but went to the police station instead. I was trembling throughout the whole thing, shaking and thinking, ‘What’s going to happen? This will ruin my life’, and did not know what to do,” he said.
“Since then, I’ve tried to put it to the back of my mind and I’ve moved on with my life. There is always life afterwards. But I would not be here today if I had not spoken to anyone.”
Another victim in his 60s said the scam had ruined his life. “Even now I have trouble going on the internet, and I can’t use Facebook any more. I wake up every morning and what is always in my head is that I don’t know if that video still exists or not,” he said.