SAN DIEGO — The FBI is warning about a rise of 'sextortion' scams that are targeting kids.
Sextortion often begins when a teen believes that they are communicating online with someone their own age who is perhaps interested in a relationship. when in reality they're communicating with a predator who's out to exploit them.
"It hurts me so bad as a mom to think about what he went through in the last hours," said Jennifer DeMay, the mother of 17-year-old Jordan DeMay, who took his own life after falling victim to a so-called sextortion operation carried out by a pair of scam artists who were later convicted of sexually exploiting a minor.
"They solicited and received a compromising image and then they immediately turned to blackmail their victim," said Mark Totten, US Attorney for the Western District of Michigan.
They targeted DeMay by posing online as a high-school girl named Dani, convincing the teen to send explicit photos of himself, then threatening to send those images to his friends and family if he did not pay $1,000.
DeMay then took his own life.
"This is a serious threat that is only getting worse," Totten said. "We know that the time from initial contact to Jordan's passing was a mere two hours."
"It can spiral extremely quickly," said Wendy Waddell, program manager for SafetyNet, part of the San Diego Police Foundation, a program dedicated to kids' online safety.
She said between 2021 and 2023, incidents of online enticement increased by 323%, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Online enticement is often the first step in sextortion scams.
"It can either be using an image or a video to get more of that content from that child, or it can also be money, just like regular extortion," Waddell told CBS 8.
To protect themselves, it is critical for young people to differentiate between the online world and the real world.
"One of the most important things that I tell them is, do not befriend anybody online who you have never met in person," she said.
While this can be an uncomfortable topic, it's crucial for parents to be a 'safe place' for their kids to come to.
"If you can be open and sensitive and understanding about topics like this, and make yourself an approachable parent, your parents are much more likely to want to share information with you about these difficult topics," Waddell added.
For more tips and resources to protect yourself from sextortion scams, click here.