Sextortion

Sextortion: Cybersecurity, teenagers, and remote sexual onslaught

It commenced with an email from an unknown sender with the subject line, “Read this and be clever.” 1

When the victim opened the email, she found sexually explicit photos of herself fastened and information that detailed where she worked. Following that were details of her individual life: her hubby and her three kids. And there was a request.

The request made this hack different: This computer intrusion was not about money. The perpetrator wished a pornographic movie of the victim. And if she did not send it within one day, he threatened to publish the photos already in his possession, and “let [her] family know about [her] dark side.” If she contacted law enforcement, he promised he would publish the photos on the Internet too.

Later in the day, to underscore his seriousness, the hacker followed up with another email menacing the victim: “You have six hours.” Two

This victim knew her correspondent only as [email protected], but the attacker turned out to be a talented 32-year-old skilled in numerous computer languages. Located in Santa Ana, California, his name was Luis Mijangos. Three

On November Five, 2009, [email protected] sent an email to another woman with the subject line: “who hacked your account READ it. ” four In the email, Mijangos linked a naked photo of the victim and told her “im [sic] in control of your computers right now.” Five

Mijangos had other identities too: Some emails came from [email protected]; sometimes he was [email protected]. Six According to court records in his federal criminal prosecution, Mijangos used at least thirty different screen names to avoid detection. Seven But all emails came from the same IP address in Santa Ana.

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In some cases, he tricked victims into creating pornographic photos and movies by assuming the online identity of the victims’ bf’s. Fourteen He then, according to court documents, “used [those] intimate pictures or movies of female victims he stole or captured to ‘sextort’ those victims, menacing to post those photos or movies on the Internet unless the victims provided more.” 15

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Mijangos’s threats were not idle. In at least one case, he posted nude photos of a victim on the Myspace account of a friend of the victim, which Mijangos had also hacked, after she refused to serve with his requests. 16

To make matters worse, Mijangos also used the computers he managed to spread his malware further, propagating to the people in his victims’ address books instant messages that appeared to come from friends and thereby inducing fresh victims to download his malware. 17

In all, federal investigators found more than 15,000 webcam-video captures, nine hundred audio recordings, and 13,000 screen captures on his computers. Eighteen Mijangos possessed files associated with one hundred twenty nine computers and toughly two hundred thirty people. Nineteen Of those, forty four of his victims were determined to be minors. Twenty His scheme reached as far away as Fresh Zealand. The movies he surreptitiously recorded displayed victims in various states of undress, getting out of the shower, and having lovemaking with fucking partners. Twenty one In addition to the intimate material he seized from victims’ computers, federal authorities also found credit card and other online account information consistent with identity theft. Twenty two He sometimes passed this information along to co-conspirators around the world. 23

Mijangos’ deeds constitute serial online sexual abuse—something, we shall argue, akin to virtual sexual onslaught. As the prosecutor said in the case, Mijangos “play[ed] psychological games with his victims” twenty four and “some of his victims accurately feared him and continued to be traumatized by his criminal conduct.” twenty five One victim reported feeling “terrorized” by Mijangos, telling that she did not leave her dorm room for a week after the gig. Twenty six His victims reported signs of immense psychological stress, noting that they had “trouble concentrating, appetite switch, enhanced school and family stress, lack of trust in others, and a desire to be alone.” twenty seven At least one harbored a continuing fear that her attacker would “return.” 28

Mijangos was arrested by the FBI in June 2010. Twenty nine He pled guilty to one count of computer hacking and one count of wiretapping. 30

Authors

Benjamin Wittes

Senior Fellow – Governance Studies

Editor-in-chief – Lawfare

Cody Poplin

Research Assistant

Quinta Jurecic

Clara Spera

He was sentenced to six years imprisonment and is scheduled to be released next year. 31

As bizarre as the Mijangos case may sound, his conduct turns out to be not all that unusual. We searched dockets and news stories for criminal cases in which one person used a computer network to extort another into producing pornography or engaging in sexual activity. We found almost eighty such cases involving, by conservative estimates, more than Three,000 victims.

This is surely the peak of a very large iceberg. Prosecutors colloquially call this sort of crime “sextortion.” And while not all cases are as sophisticated as this one, a superb many sextortion cases have taken place―in federal courts, in state courts, and internationally―over a relatively brief span of time. Each involves an attacker who effectively invades the homes of sometimes large numbers of remote victims and requests the production of sexual activity from them. Sextortion cases involve what are effectively online, remote sexual assaults, sometimes over good distances, sometimes even crossing international borders, and sometimes―as with Mijangos―involving a good many victims.

We tend think of cybersecurity as a problem for governments, major corporations, and—at an individual level—for people with credit card numbers or identities to steal. The average teenage or young-adult Internet user, however, is the very softest of cybersecurity targets. Teenagers and youthfull adults don’t use strong passwords or two-step verification, as a general rule. They often “sext” one another. They sometimes record pornographic or semi-pornographic pics or movies of themselves. And they share material with other teenagers whose cyberdefense practices are even laxer than their own. Sextortion thus turns out to be fairly effortless to accomplish in a target-rich environment that often does not require more than malicious guile.

For the very first time in the history of the world, the global connectivity of the Internet means that you don’t have to be in the same country as someone to sexually menace that person.

It is a fine mistake, however, to confuse sextortion with consensual sexting or other online teenage flirtations. It is a crime of often unspeakable cruelty.

It is also a crime that, as we shall demonstrate, does not presently exist in either federal law or the laws of the states. As defined in the Mijangos court documents, sextortion is “a form of extortion and/or blackmail” wherein “the item or service requested/demanded is the spectacle of a sexual act.” thirty two The crime takes a number of different forms, and it gets prosecuted under a number of different statutes. Sometimes it involves hacking people’s computers to acquire pics then used to extort more. More often, it involves manipulation and trickery on social media. But at the core of the crime always lies the intersection of cybersecurity and sexual coercion. For the very first time in the history of the world, the global connectivity of the Internet means that you don’t have to be in the same country as someone to sexually menace that person.

The problem of this fresh lovemaking crime of the digital age, fueled by ubiquitous Internet connections and webcams, is almost entirely unstudied. Law enforcement authorities are well aware of it. Brock Nicholson, head of Homeland Security Investigations in Atlanta, Georgia, recently said of online sextoriton, “Predators used to stalk playgrounds. This is the fresh playground.” 33

But while the FBI has issued numerous warnings about sextortion, the government publishes no data on the subject. Unlike its close cousin, the form of nonconsensual pornography known as “revenge porn,” the problem of sextortion has not received sustained press attention or activity in numerous state legislatures, in part because with few exceptions, sextortion victims have chosen to remain anonymous, as the law in most jurisdictions permits.

The seventy eight cases we reviewed alone involve at least 1,397 victims, and this is undoubtedly just the peak of the iceberg.

But don’t let the problem’s invisibility idiot you. The seventy eight cases we reviewed alone involve at least 1,397 victims, and this is undoubtedly just the peak of the iceberg. If the prosecutorial estimates in the various cases are to be believed, the number of actual victims most likely ranges inbetween Trio,000 and 6,500―and, for reasons we explain below, may be much higher even than that. As the teenage child of one of the present authors put the matter, “You just can’t put a portable porn studio in the arms of every teenager in the country and not expect bad things to happen.” 34

This paper represents an effort―to our skill the first―to explore in depth and across jurisdictions the problems of sextortion. In it, we look at the methods used by perpetrators and the prosecutorial implements authorities have used to bring offenders to justice. We hope that by highlighting the scale and scope of the problem, and the ferocity of these cases for the many victims they affect, to spur a close look at both state and federal laws under which these cases get prosecuted.

Our key findings include:

• Sextortion is dramatically understudied. While it’s an acknowledged problem both within law enforcement and among private advocates, no government agency publishes data on its prevalence; no private advocacy group does either. The subject lacks an academic literature. Aside from a few prosecutors and investigators who have dedicated significant energy to the problem over time, and a few journalists who have written—often excellently—about individual cases, the problem has been largely overlooked.
• Yet sextortion is remarkably common. We identified seventy eight cases that met our definition of the crime—and a larger number that contained significant elements of the crime but that, for one reason or another, did not fully please our criteria. These cases were prosecuted in twenty nine states and territories of the United States and three foreign jurisdictions.
• Sextortionists, like other perpetrators of lovemaking crimes, tend to be prolific repeat players. Among the cases we studied, authorities identified at least ten victims in twenty five cases. In thirteen cases, moreover, there were at least twenty identified victims. And in four cases, investigators identified more than one hundred victims. The numbers get far worse if you consider prosecutorial estimates of the number of extra victims in each case, rather than the number of specifically identified victims. In thirteen cases, prosecutors estimated that there were more than one hundred victims; in two, prosecutors estimated that there had been “hundreds, if not thousands” of victims.
• Sextortion perpetrators are, in the cases we have seen, uniformly masculine. Victims, by contrast, vary. Virtually all of the adult victims in these cases are female, and adult sextortion therefore shows up to be a species of violence against women. On the other arm, most sextortion victims in this sample are children, and a sizable percentage of the child victims turn out to be boys.
• There is no consistency in the prosecution of sextortion cases. Because no crime of sextortion exists, the cases proceed under a hodgepodge of state and federal laws. Some are prosecuted as child pornography cases. Some are prosecuted as hacking cases. Some are prosecuted as extortions. Some are prosecuted as stalkings. Conduct that seems remarkably similar to an outside observer produces deeds under the most dimly-related of statutes.
• These cases thus also produce wild, and in in our judgment indefensible, disparities in sentencing. Many sextortionists, particularly those who prey on minors, receive lengthy sentences under child pornography laws. On the other forearm, others—like Mijangos—receive sentences dramatically lighter than they would get for numerous physical attacks on even a fraction of the number of people they are accused of victimizing. In our sample, one perpetrator received only three years in prison for victimizing up to twenty two youthful boys. Thirty five Another received only thirty months for a case in which federal prosecutors identified fifteen separate victims. 36
• Sentencing is particularly light in one of two key circumstances: (1) when all victims are adults and federal prosecutors thus do not have recourse to the child pornography statutes, or (Two) in cases prosecuted at the state level.
• Sextortion is brutal. This is not a matter of playful consensual sexting—a subject that has received ample attention from a shocked press. Sextortion, rather, is a form of sexual exploitation, coercion, and violence, often but not always of children. In many cases, the perpetrators seem to take pleasure in their victims’ pleading and protestations that they are funked and underage. In numerous cases we have reviewed, victims contemplate, menace, or even attempt suicide—sometimes to the apparent pleasure of their tormentors. Thirty seven At least two cases involve either a father or stepfather tormenting children living in his house. Thirty eight Some of the victims are very youthfull. And the impacts on victims can be severe and likely lasting. Many cases result, after all, in photos permanently on the Internet on numerous child pornography sites following extended periods of coercion.
• Certain jurisdictions have seen a disproportionate number of sextortion cases. This almost certainly reflects faithful investigators and prosecutors in those locales, and not a higher incidence of the offense. Rather, our data suggest that sextortion is taking place anywhere social media invasion is ubiquitous.

The paper proceeds in several distinct parts. We begin with a literature review of the limited existing scholarship and data on sextortion. We then outline our methodology for collecting and analyzing data for the present probe. We then suggest a working definition of sextortion. In the subsequent section, we provide a sketch of the aggregate statistics exposed by our data concerning the scope of the sextortion problem, and we examine the statutes used and sentences delivered in federal and state sextortion cases. We then turn to detailing several specific case studies in sextortion. In our last empirical section, we look shortly at the victim influence of these crimes. Ultimately, we suggest several recommendations for policymakers, law enforcement, parents, teachers, and victims.

We suggest more detailed legislative recommendations in a separate paper, “Closing the Sextortion Sentencing Gap: A Legislative Proposal.” 39

An understudied problem

Sextortion is remarkably understudied. Despite the rash of sextortion cases, some of them reasonably prominent, press attention to the issue has been modest, particularly in comparison to the dramatic attention loyal to issues of online bullying, child pornography generally, and vengeance porn. While federal law enforcement has responded passionately to individual cases around the country, a broader policy discussion has not followed. Most people, we suspect, have never heard of sextortion.

The term “sextortion” is not fresh. It began popping up in news coverage of incidents of sexual extortion involving online sexual exchanges with relative frequency beginning in 2010, forty however we found one use of the term dating back to 1950. Forty one Prosecutors use the term routinely in public statements to describe a certain type of case. 42

Still, there has been no serious academic research surrounding sextortion. There have been no studies examining the most basic questions surrounding the problem: How common are these cases? What are the basic elements that characterize them? Are our laws adequate for the investigation and prosecution of sextortion cases?

For its part, the press has tended to report on individual cases, not on the phenomenon more broadly. Mentions of the larger problem tend to be passing ones. The Fresh York Times, for example, recently ran a brief chunk in its “Sunday Review” section, outlining all types of scams that those looking for love on the Internet might encounter, including sextortion. Forty three Another Times article on the anonymous messaging app Kik noted that law enforcement commonly comes across the app in connection with sextortion cases. Forty four In these Times chunks, as with most instances, the mention of sextortion is fleeting.

GQ magazine has run two feature-length stories on sextortion, both focused on individual cases. In 2009, the magazine covered the story of Anthony Stancl, a troubled and bullied student at Fresh Berlin Eisenhower high school in Wisconsin, who tricked fellow masculine students into sending him sexually explicit photos and movies as both a form of sexual gratification and also social vengeance. Forty five However the title of the GQ lump about Stancl references sextortion, the lump does not explore the subject beyond Stancl’s own case.

In 2011, GQ readers also learned of Mijangos in an article that does highlight the unique qualities of sextortion. That article explained that “[d]espite billions spent on technology that lets us broadcast our daily lives, all it takes is one boy, a self-taught hacker with no college degree, to turn that power against us.” forty six A number of media outlets have done brief chunks on the problem. 47

The Digital Citizens Alliance touched on sextortion tangentially as part of a report on remote access trojans (RATs). The report, among other things, demonstrated that RATs like the one used by Mijangos are lightly accessible and fairly affordable. On one hacker website, the authors found an advertisement for access to computers that belong to chicks for $Five each; access to a boy’s computer sold for less, only $1 each. The report also notes thousands of tutorials on YouTube, instructing hackers on the best technics for slaving a device; other movies emerge to showcase off an individual hacker’s exploits, displaying movies of victims from their own webcams. Yet this report, published in 2015, focused on the cybersecurity problem of RATs broadly, and less on the exploitations at play in sextortion cases. 48

Government attention has likewise been spotty. The Justice Department’s in-house bulletin for prosecutors has specifically addressed the sextortion phenomenon only once, in 2011, and then in a brief, five-page article on charging options for cases involving underage victims only. Forty nine The Federal Bureau of Investigation cautioned parents and their children about the sextortion threat in a two thousand twelve advisory. Fifty The following year, the Bureau’s then-director touched on sextortion in a stray paragraph in congressional testimony that canvassed the Bureau’s various law enforcement and other activities. Fifty one In 2015, the FBI once again warned parents and children following the conviction of one Lucas Michael Chansler (see case studies below), this time calling on the public for more information about Chansler’s crimes, fifty two and releasing a movie explaining how sextortion occurs and how parents should talk to their children about it. Fifty three As part of the same release, the FBI also produced a brief, one-minute radio briefing on the “growing number of reports of sextortion.” fifty four A separate sextortion fact sheet, released at the same time, provided more information on how perpetrators carry out their crimes, and ways for parents and children to protect themselves from those who would attempt to sextort them. 55

Yet there has never been a congressional hearing on sextortion as a free-standing issue, and neither current nor proposed legislation so much as mentions the phenomenon. To the extent sextortion is on officialdom’s radar at all, it shows up only as part and parcel of a thicker fight to hammer back online lovemaking offenses more generally.

The scholarship has trended along similar lines. Some legal scholarship has alluded to sextortion, but only in passing. Fifty six Legal academics have noted the phenomenon in the context of computer crimes more broadly, but have not concentrated on sextortion as a concentrate of examine.

Take for example Dayton Law Professor Susan Brenner’s book “Cybercrime and the Law,” which dedicated only four of its two hundred nineteen pages to the crime of sextortion. After noting that cyber sexual extortion is a fresh but rising phenomenon and naming a few latest cases, Brenner concludes that extortion statutes wherein the target’s property is presumed to have value in the “traditional, financial sense” may present difficulties for prosecutors in these cases. She suggests prosecutors may be successful by “(1) adopting fresh, sextortion-specific statutes or (Two) revising existing extortion statutes so they encompass the type of harm inflicted in sextortion cases.” fifty seven Danielle Keats Citron’s excellent book, “Hate Crimes in Cyberspace,” contains extensive discussion of vengeance porn and virtually no discussion of sextortion. 58

Nor are data, either official or private, readily available. We sought data on sextortion cases from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which informed us that they “are not able to separate out” sextortion cases from other types of cases, as “federal data is based on statute and does not provide the detail needed to identify these offenses.” fifty nine We also sought data from the FBI; despite the Bureau’s warnings on the subject, it could provide only a link to a webpage describing the Bureau’s Violent Crimes Against Children (VCAC) program. Sixty The Department of Justice was able to flag eight specific sextortion cases but noted that this was a “sampling” because “the department does not have a data-tracking category for sextortion.” 61

We also sought data from activist organizations aware of and worried about the problem.

We contacted the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, sixty two the Cyber Civil Rights Legal Project, sixty three the Family Online Safety Institute, sixty four Thorn, sixty five and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), sixty six none of which could provide data on the prevalence of sextortion cases nationally. The NCMEC has published a limited set of data culled from its CyberTipline, which it reports in part as goes after:

• 78 percent of the incidents involved female children and twelve percent involved masculine children (In ten percent of incidents, child gender could not be determined);
• The average age at the time of the incident was approximately fifteen years old, despite a broader age-range for female children (eight-17 years old) compared to masculine children (11-17 years old); and
• In twenty two percent of the reports, the reporter mentioned being suspicious of, or knowing that, numerous children were targeted by the same offender.

Based on the information known by the CyberTipline reporter, sextortion shows up to have occurred with one of three primary objectives (In twelve percent of reports, the objective could not be determined):

• To acquire extra, and often increasingly more explicit, sexual content (photos/movies) of the child (76 percent)
• To obtain money from the child (six percent)
• To have lovemaking with the child (six percent)

Sextortion most commonly occurred via phone/tablet messaging apps, social networking sites, and during movie talks.

• In forty one percent of reports, it was suspected or known that numerous online platforms were involved in facilitating communication inbetween the offender and child. These reports seemed to indicate a pattern whereby the offender would intentionally and systematically stir the communication with the child from one online platform type to another.
• Commonly, the offender would treatment the child on a social networking site and then attempt to stir the communication to anonymous messaging apps or movie talks where he/she would obtain sexually explicit content from the child. The child would then be threatened to have this content posted online, particularly on social media sites where their family and friends would see, if the child did not do what the offender desired. 67

These data, however useful and illuminating and broadly consistent with our own findings, are necessarily limited. Because they are only based on victim reporting, there is no information about subsequent prosecutions, investigative findings, or critically, victims other than ones who originally reported the offenses. That turns out to be a fateful omission.

Our point is not to criticize any of these organizations, or government agencies, for the lack of data on the subject. The problem of sextortion is, in fact, fresh. It remains relatively undefined. And at least with respect to the activist groups, it is a flawlessly reasonable treatment to concentrate on vengeance porn very first and on the problem of non-consensual pornography—of which sextortion is just one species—more generally. The result, however, is a certain gap in our understanding of this fresh form of crime. How big a problem is it indeed? How many people does it affect? And how should we define it? This paper represents a systematic effort to examine these problems.

Methods

Because of the disaggregated nature of the data we sought, the breadth of the problem, and the numerous criminal statutes available for possible prosecutorial use, we began with a systematic search of media on sextortion. Using LexisNexis, we searched media databases in all fifty states and the District of Columbia for keywords related to sextortion. We used the following keywords: “Sextort,” “Sextortion,” “Cyber Sextortion,” “Cyber Sexual Extortion,” “Cyber Sexual Exploitation,” “Online Sexual Extortion,” “Online Sexual Exploitation,” “Non-consensual Pornography,” and “Nonconsensual Pornography.” Using the same keywords, we then also searched WestLaw, looking for legal opinions involving sextortion.

The data we report here reflect our best sense of the sextortion landscape as of April Legal, 2016.

We then read all media results that our searches of LexisNexis returned, selecting those cases from articles that fit the parameters we set for sextortion cases (described below). We identified seventy eight cases, sixty three of them federal from thirty nine different judicial districts, twelve of them from the state courts of eight states, and three of them international cases from Israel, Mexico, and the Netherlands. In some instances, prosecutors we contacted made us aware of other cases. In other instances, the cases themselves cited earlier sextortion cases. As we progressed, a number of news stories made us aware of extra cases that arose after our searches took place.

For federal cases, we used both the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) service and proprietary online databases to gather the warrant applications, complaints, indictments, prayer agreements, and judgments for the individual cases, as available, as well as other relevant documents that describe the conduct at issue in the cases. For state and international cases, we acquired original court documents where possible, but both for language and document-availability reasons, we also relied to a considerable degree on press accounts.

We examined each case to discern the number of clearly-identified (generally not by name) victims, the maximum number of victims estimated by prosecutors, the ages and genders of the victims, the number of states and countries involved in the offense pattern, and the sentence given the defendant (if any). We also tracked certain common elements of sextortion cases, both those charged and those pled or convicted; specifically, we identified the following recurrent elements in all cases in which they arose:

• computer hacking;
• manipulation of victims using social media (catfishing);
• interstate victimization;
• international victimization; and
• request for in-person sexual activity.

For those cases prosecuted federally, we also looked specifically at the criminal offenses charged in each case, as well as those to which the defendant either pled guilty or was convicted.

The data we report here reflect our best sense of the sextortion landscape as of April Eighteen, 2016. This report reflects neither developments within cases after that date nor fresh cases that have arisen since that date.

We are certain that this dataset is not finish. That is, there are sextortion cases both domestically and overseas, most likely many of them, that we have not identified. We are even more certain that an enormous number of victims have not reported acts that would warrant aggressive investigation and prosecution along the lines of the cases we have found. We have identified the cases discussed in this probe, in other words, not as illustrating the totality of the sextortion problem but as a significant and illustrative sample of it. We do not purport to know if it represents the bulk of the cases that have been prosecuted or not. We believe, however, that the prosecuted cases, like other forms of sexual onslaught, likely reflect a little percentage of the unprosecuted ones, meaning that we should understand online sextortion as a feature of life on the Internet for large numbers of vulnerable members of society.

Ultimately, one extra methodological note: For purposes of this probe, we have taken prosecutorial allegations in many instances as true. Each of these cases involves an adjudication, and defendants are entitled to a presumption of innocence in the absence of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. We are not, however, an adjudicative figure. We are, rather, looking to understand empirically the scope and depth of a social problem. As such, conduct that the FBI or prosecutors believe has taken place but for which a defendant has not been convicted may be just as interesting as that conduct which has generated a conviction. This point is especially significant with respect to estimates as to the number of victims in different cases and to conduct charged but dropped in the context of prayer agreements.

A working definition of sextortion

Legally speaking, there’s no such thing as sextortion. The word is a kind a prosecutorial slang for a class of obviously criminal conduct that does not in reality correspond neatly with any known criminal offense. Sextortion cases are sometimes prosecuted under child pornography laws, sometimes as computer intrusions, sometimes as stalkings, and sometimes as extortions. The term “sextortion” lacks a precise definition of its own, much less clear elements of the sort that arise out of legislative definition.

Legally speaking, there’s no such thing as sextortion. The word is a kind a prosecutorial slang for a class of obviously criminal conduct that does not in reality correspond neatly with any known criminal offense.

Still, at a high level of altitude, the conduct is effortless enough to describe: sextortion is old-fashioned extortion or blackmail, carried out over a computer network, involving some threat—generally but not always a threat to release sexually-explicit photos of the victim—if the victim does not engage in some form of further sexual activity.

By defining sextortion in this style, it is significant to understand that we are excluding a diversity of closely-related coercive activities that may also warrant more attention than they have received. For example, it is possible for something like sextortion to take place entirely offline; indeed, sexual extortion has taken place as long as people have had the power to request lovemaking from one another on threat of doing each other harm. We have not included any cases where conduct takes place solely in the offline world, however, on the theory both that this is an old problem that the law has had many generations to address and that it does not pose the same inter-jurisdictional and cybersecurity problems as do the same activities online. When we say “sextortion,” therefore, we are talking only about online sexual extortion. None of this is to diminish the horrifying extortions by which, for example, many pimps keep women in forms of sexual slavery.

Similarly, in the course of our research, we have discovered a number of cases—including several celebrated “revenge porn” cases—that have significant elements of sextortion and in which the threat of exposure of sexually-explicit material is used to extort money, but in which sexual activity itself is not demanded of the victim. Sixty eight In online sexually-oriented extortion, it is possible for a perpetrator to use the release of sexual pictures or movies as a threat against the victim; the production of sexual photos or movies can also be the request; most commonly, both take place at once. That is, the perpetrator uses the threat of the release of material to coerce the production of more material.

A related but distinct problem is that of online scams that extort money from individuals after they have engaged in anonymous online sexual movie chatting—for example over Skype. One such syndicate in the Philippines was busted in 2015. Following a peak, Philippine police arrested fifty eight people and seized two hundred fifty computers in seven areas across the country. Police said the extortionists acquired hundreds of victims in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, the United States, and the United Kingdom over the course of three to four years. The group found and friended victims over various social media sites, inviting them to engage in cybersex. After surreptitiously filming the talks, the group would then request up to $Two,000 in exchange for not publicly posting the material. The national police chief of the Philippines compared the group to a call center, where employees sit in rows of cubicles luring in foreign victims. The extortion ring was violated up only after its activity led to the suicide of one 17-year-old boy located in Scotland. Sixty nine

While these cases, and others like them, can be utterly severe and present their own cybersecurity and privacy problems, we have excluded from this analysis all cases in which sexual activity was not demanded of the victim. If a perpetrator menaces a victim with exposure of sexually-explicit movies unless she pays him money, we have not included that in our sample unless the perpetrator also requests the production of further sexual photos or movies.

The reason for this decision is that the primary phenomenon we seek to define here is the remote coercion of hook-up. The remote coercion of money using sexual pictures is not a fresh problem, tho’ the Internet has certainly made it worse. The capability of a person to force someone halfway around the world to engage in sexual activity, by contrast, is a fresh form of digital manhandle that was unthinkable only a few years ago. The capability of a single perpetrator to exploit hundreds, or even thousands, of victims around the world was particularly beyond our collective imaginations.

We have thus proposed a relatively narrow definition that excludes a considerable figure of related criminal activity in an effort to concentrate attention on what is fresh here.

The data in aggregate

We have included in this analysis a total of seventy eight cases seventy in fifty two different jurisdictions, seventy one 29 states or territories, seventy two and three foreign countries.

Every single perpetrator in the cases we examined is masculine.

Fifty-five of those cases (71 percent) involve only minor victims. Seventy three An extra fourteen (Legal percent), by contrast, involve a mix of minor victims and adult victims. Seventy four In nine cases (12 percent), all identified victims were adults. 75

Every single perpetrator in the cases we examined is masculine. The vast majority of the victims, by contrast, are female. Among the adult victims, almost all are female. Seventy six The picture is more complicated among the child victims, where a significant minority of victims is masculine. In thirteen cases (17 percent) involving minor victims, all identified victims in court documents are masculine. Seventy seven In an extra eight cases (Ten percent), the victims include both masculines and females. Seventy eight Several truly brutal cases concentrate on youthful boys. So it’s a mistake to think of sextortion as purely a problem of violence against women. There is clearly a problem with respect to boys as well.

The length of a given perpetrator’s sentence tends to turn less on the number of victims or the cruelty of the conduct involved in the case than on whether the victims are minors or adults. The reason is that federal child pornography laws carry particularly stiff sentences, far stiffer than those at issue with stalking, extortion, or computer intrusion laws. The result is that of those cases that involved minor victims and did not produce a life sentence, the sentencing range varied from seven months to one hundred thirty nine years imprisonment, with a median of two hundred eighty eight months (24 years) and a mean sentence of three hundred sixty nine months (31 years). Cases that involved only adult victims, by contrast, involved sentencing ranges from one month to 6.Five years imprisonment, a median sentence of only forty months and a mean sentence of thirty eight months.

By far, the most common feature of sextortion cases is social media manipulation, in which the perpetrator tricks the victim into sending him the compromising pictures he then uses to extort more. Social media manipulation of some kind is present in the tremendous majority of cases. Fully sixty five cases (83 percent) involve some form of social media manipulation. Seventy nine Also known as “catfishing,” this behavior is even more common when the victim is a minor, with some form of social media manipulation featuring in ninety one percent of the cases involving minors. Eighty Only three cases with only adult victims, by contrast, involved catfishing. Eighty one Alternatively, some form of computer hacking was involved in forty three percent of cases with adult victims, eighty two but only nine percent of cases only involving only minor victims. Eighty three Hacking featured in fifteen cases (Nineteen percent) total. 84

By far, the most common feature of sextortion cases is social media manipulation

In many of the cases involving catfishing, the defendant used information he had somehow discovered about the victim to make his catfishing more effective. In one case, the information in question was obtained by hacking the victim’s computer. Eighty five In at least one other case, the defendant looked up information available online. Eighty six In another, the defendant worked as a camp counselor over the summer and accumulated information about campers over the course of his job—and then later used that info to catfish and blackmail them. Eighty seven Similarly, the criminal complaint in one case alleges that the defendant used individual information he knew about his victims from his offline interactions with them to make his threats more effective. 88

A majority of the cases we examined overtly crossed state lines, sometimes the lines of many states. Forty nine cases (63 percent) involved significant interstate elements: the perpetrator, for example, victimizing people in other states. Eighty nine At least six cases involved more than ten jurisdictions, either foreign or domestic. Ninety Seven extra cases involved more than five jurisdictions. 91

The same cybersecurity vulnerabilities that are making our corporations and government agencies ripe for cyber exploitations from foreign intelligence agencies and hackers are making teenagers and youthful adults ripe for highly-remote sexual exploitations.

A surprising number of cases cross international borders as well. Sixteen cases (21 percent) involve a perpetrator victimizing at least one person in a country other than that in which he is himself residing. Ninety two This finding seems particularly challenging. It used to be unlikely to sexually brunt someone in a different country. That is no longer true. The same cybersecurity vulnerabilities that are making our corporations and government agencies ripe for cyber exploitations from foreign intelligence agencies and hackers are making teenagers and youthful adults ripe for highly-remote sexual exploitations.

Some cases manage to leap out of the online world and involve manhandle in the physical world. In thirteen cases (17 percent) perpetrators demanded actual in-person sexual activity from victims, not merely the production of pornographic materials. Ninety three This category of case hints at one of the fault lines in sextortion cases. The majority of sextortionists are after targets of chance on social media. Some sextortion cases, by contrast, are highly-targeted cases of intimate manhandle: a former beau who can’t let go and goes after his ex-girlfriend’s daughter, ninety four a father leaned on molesting his daughter, ninety five or some other person with a pathological obsession with a particular victim. Ninety six These cases tend to look more like stalking—and are often prosecuted as such. They tend to involve smaller numbers of victims. But they are also far likelier to involve physical manhandle of those victims. In some of these cases, sextortion is only a part of a far larger pattern of manhandle.

Calculating the total number of victims in these cases is unlikely. The cases cumulatively identify 1,397 victims, but these are only the victims counted by authorities in charging or alleging specific conduct against a particular defendant. For example, if prosecutors included a specific reference to a particular sextortion victim in a charging document, a complaint, or a prayer agreement, or if a sentencing memo says that a particular number of victims has been identified, this victim—or this number of victims—will be included in this total figure.

This way of counting, however, grossly undercounts the true number of victims. In many cases, prosecutors do not charge a defendant with every example of sextortion of which they have reason to believe him guilty; they charge, rather, only conduct related to those victims where the evidence is most developed. Along the way, they sometimes mention a much larger figure of other cases in which they believe the same perpetrator was involved.

The disparities inbetween the number of identified victims and the number estimated can be extreme. For example, in the case of Brian Caputo—a California man accused in federal court of posing as a teenage woman on social media to trick real teenage women into sending him explicit pictures—prosecutors identified “at least eight possible minor victims.” On the other palm, in the same document, they say that they have found eight hundred forty three emails in which “almost every e-mail either contained child pornography or was [Caputo] communicating with possible other unidentified victims.” ninety seven Similarly, in the particularly sinister case of Richard Leon Finkbiner (detailed below), prosecutors identified only thirteen victims, but they made clear that those victims stood in for “hundreds, if not thousands, of other minors and adults all over the world” whom Finkbiner also sextorted. Ninety eight In some cases, the best prosecutorial estimates of the total number of victims are fairly vague. The government frequently describes “numerous” victims, for example; in some cases it refers to “hundreds” or “more than 100” or some such minimum round number. By contrast, in some cases, investigators seem to have gone through a superb deal of trouble to identify every victim they could. All of this makes any effort to estimate the total size of the victim population necessarily a back-of-the-envelope sort of calculation.

Still, it is possible in very round terms to give a sense of the magnitude of the victim population. If we take the list of prosecutorial estimates of the likely number of victims in each case, and we make a series of different assumptions about what certain terms suggest on average, we can come up with various estimates. 99

A conservative treatment would be to assume that when prosecutors describe a given sextortionist as having “numerous” victims, “numerous” will work out on average to around 20, that “hundreds” should be interpreted conservatively to mean 100, and that we should take the lowest figure in any range (meaning that a phrase like “between one hundred and 150” should mean 100). Tabulated this way, the total victim court comes out to be around Three,200.

A more aggressive treatment would be to assume that when prosecutors are only dealing with twenty victims, they tend to identify them and count them, and therefore phrases like “numerous” should mean something more like 50. Similarly, “hundreds” should refer to at least 200, and more than X should refer to something close to one hundred fifty percent of X than to X itself. In this treatment, we take in any range of numbers the mean inbetween the two poles. The phrase “at least hundreds and possibly thousands,” meantime, should imply something more like seven hundred fifty than 100. Using this method of tabulation, the figure works out to be more than Five,200.

Even this treatment, however, may involve a substantial undercount. In many cases, prosecutors do not even attempt an accounting of the total number of victims. They merely identify a few victims and prosecute based on those few, leaving the rest uncounted. There are thus a bunch of cases that are clearly not intimate manhandle cases—say stalkings of individuals, which are very targeted at those individuals—but give every indication, rather, of being more indiscriminate. Yet these twenty eight cases identify, like the intimate manhandle cases, only one or two victims and lack a high-end estimate as to the number of victims. We think this is likely not because the number of identified victims is, in fact, equal to the total number of victims but—in most cases—because prosecutors did not bother to include estimates in their pleadings or because investigators did not bother to count other possible victims. To compensate for this, we examined the average disparity inbetween the high-end victim estimate and the number of identified victims in those cases in which a high-end estimate does exist, using the more aggressive assumptions in our 2nd model. In those cases, the high-end victim estimate averages to Four.6 times the number of identified victims. Using this multiplier for the set of 28, we estimate that a reasonable guess as to the total number of victims may include up to an extra 1,500 people.

Put simply, we think a reasonable estimate of total victims in these cases will run anywhere from about Three,000 to about 6,500.

We think a reasonable estimate of total victims in these cases will run anywhere from about Three,000 to about 6,500.

There’s at least one extra complicating factor. A single pair of sextortionists, the FBI has estimated, may have as many as Three,800 victims inbetween them. This estimate does not emerge in the court documents associated with their cases, which we discuss below. But the FBI has stated it publicly elsewhere. One hundred If that figure is correct, the entire range—calculated by whatever means and with whatever assumptions—needs to be shifted upward by almost several thousand victims.

Prosecuting sextortion

One of the most interesting features of sextortion cases is the diversity of statutes under which authorities prosecute them. As we noted above, sextortion does not exist in federal or state law as a crime of its own. So sextortionate patterns of conduct can plausibly implicate any number of criminal statutes, which carry very different penalties and elements.

In the federal system, at least, the workhorse statute is eighteen USC § 2251, which prohibits sexual exploitation of children. Prosecutors charged under this law in forty three of the cases under examine here (55 percent). One hundred one In particular, subsection § 2251(a) does a superb deal of powerful lifting for prosecutors. Under that section, “Any person who employs, uses, persuades, induces, entices, or coerces any minor to engage in . . . any sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing any visual depiction of such conduct” is subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of fifteen years in prison. 102

More generally, the child pornography laws provide powerful devices of choice for prosecutors, at least in the cases in which minor victims are involved. Section § two thousand two hundred fifty two of Title Legal, which relates to materials associated with the sexual exploitation of children, can be used to prosecute both receipt and distribution of child pornography and possession of it; charges under this section display up in twenty eight cases (36 percent). One hundred three Seventeen cases (22 percent) also contain charges under the adjacent section § 2252A, which is a parallel law related to child pornography in particular. One hundred four And eighteen USC § 2422(b), which forbids coercion or enticement of a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity, shows up in nineteen cases (24 percent). One hundred five Where they are available, the child pornography laws do clearly give prosecutors the contraptions they need, owing to the stiff sentences they mete out.

The trouble is that not all sextortionists prey on children, and where none of the victims involved in the conduct charged is a minor, the cases fall into something of a statutory lacuna. After all, without touching someone or issuing a threat of force, it is not possible to crack the aggravated sexual manhandle law (Eighteen USC § 2241), which only applies in any event in the special maritime or territorial jurisdiction of the United States or in a prison facility. (That same jurisdictional limit applies to the lesser crime of sexual manhandle, eighteen USC § 2242, and other federal hook-up crimes statutes.) In other words, absent a child victim, there’s no visible on-point federal law that covers the sexual elements of sextortion.

In other words, absent a child victim, there’s no visible on-point federal law that covers the sexual elements of sextortion.

The result is a frequent prosecutorial reliance on the federal interstate extortion statute (Legal USC § 875)—the relevant portion of which carries only a two year sentence. This law shows up in twenty nine of the federal cases we examined (37 percent).

In cases in which the attacks are very targeted against an individual, prosecutors have sometimes relied on the federal stalking law (Legitimate USC § 2261A), charges under which emerge in nine cases (12 percent). And in twelve cases (15 percent) involving hacking or appropriation of social media accounts, prosecutors have used the Computer Fraud and Manhandle Act (Legal USC § 1030), the identity theft law (Eighteen USC § 1028A), or both.

As we noted above, these cases produce sentences on average dramatically lower than those charged under the child exploitation laws. This is partly because the child pornography laws carry particularly severe sentences, but it’s also because sextortion cases end up outside of the arena of hook-up crimes and prosecuted as hacking and extortion cases. As we argue in “Closing the Sextortion Sentencing Gap,” Congress should examine closely the question of whether sextortionists who prey on adults—sometimes many of them—are receiving excessively lenient treatment under current law. Suffice it for present purposes to observe that there is no analog for adult victims to eighteen USC § 2422’s criminalization of coercing a minor to engage in sexual activity (at least if that sexual activity does not involve prostitution or otherwise illegal activity). And while eighteen USC § 875, the extortion statute, permits a 20-year sentence for the transmittal of a ransom request, and the same stiff term for anyone who transmits a “threat to injure the person of another,” the statute offers only a two-year sentence for anyone who, “with intent to extort from any person . . . any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to injure the property or reputation of the addressee.” It contains no enhanced sentence for the situation in which the thing of value in question being extorted is coerced production of nonconsensual pornography.

Another area in which current law looks deficient is at the state level. State prosecutors are among those who have done the most dedicated work in this area. But the data in aggregate strongly suggest that they are working with powerless contraptions compared to their federal counterparts. The average sentence in the six state cases that have reached the sentencing phases is eighty eight months (seven years and four months). By contrast, the average sentence in the forty nine federal cases that have produced a sentence less than life in prison (one case has produced a life sentence) is, by contrast, three hundred forty nine months (a little over twenty nine years).

This dramatic disparity is only partly a reflection of strong federal child pornography sentencing. It also reflects feeble state laws that are under-punishing serious offenders. For example, Joseph Simone in Rhode Island, who sextorted twenty two teenage boys in a particularly brutal style, received only one year in prison and two more years of home confinement (and an extra period of probation). One hundred six Similarly, it’s hard to imagine that had Cameron Wiley been prosecuted in federal court for sextorting two underage ladies, he would have received only seven months in jail and an extra eighteen months of probation—as he did in Wisconsin state court. 107

Case studies in sextortion

Sextortion cases vary. Most involve relatively elementary social media manipulations, in which the perpetrator tricks victims into sending him one or more nude photographs and then uses the threat of release of those photos to extort the production of larger numbers of more explicit ones. These attacks tend to have large numbers of victims and to be relatively indiscriminate. As noted above, however, some sextortion cases involve very targeted attacks on individuals known personally to the perpetrator. A smaller number involve one or more forms of hacking, either intrusions into victims’ social media accounts or, in some instances, the actual hacking of their computers and the remote controlling of their webcams.

Congress should examine closely the question of whether sextortionists who prey on adults—sometimes many of them—are receiving excessively lenient treatment under current law.

What goes after are detailed accounts of eight sextortion cases; the accounts are culled from court documents to give readers a flavor of both the common threads inbetween the cases and the diversity among them. Our purpose is both to describe the mechanics of sextortion and to portray how the crime operates on its victims, with the aim of communicating the seriousness of these offenses.

Jared James Abrahams

Jared James Abrahams, a California college freshman studying computer science, was arrested in two thousand thirteen for the sextortion of the woman who would become the crime’s best-known victim: Cassidy Wolf, that year’s winner of the Miss Teenage USA beauty pageant. One hundred eight Abrahams and Wolf had gone to high school together in Temecula, California. One hundred nine She very first suspected that something was wrong when she received notifications from several social media services that someone had attempted to switch her passwords. Thirty minutes later, Abrahams emailed her, requesting that she either send him nude pictures of herself on the social media service Snapchat, send a “good quality movie,” or Skype with him “and do what I tell you to do for five minutes.” Otherwise, he would upload naked pictures of her to her social media accounts. Wolf did not recognize the photos, which appeared to have been taken from her webcam. 110

Investigators later found that Abrahams had sextorted at least twelve youthful women, including women from Ireland, Canada, and Moldova and managed the computers of inbetween one hundred and one hundred fifty women one hundred eleven He installed keylogger software on his victims’ computers to record their passwords and build up access to their social media accounts—though he mocked Wolf for making her passwords so effortless for him to guess. One hundred twelve He would also install the malware programs Blackshades and DarkComet, which enabled him to remotely control his victims’ webcams without their skill and surreptitiously take photographs. One hundred thirteen He often contacted victims using other email addresses that he had hacked, and would use the productivity software Bananatag and Toutapp to monitor when his victims read his emails. 114

One victim wrote to Abrahams, “Please recall im only 17. Have a heart.” He responded, “I’ll tell you this right now! I do NOT have a heart!! However I do stick to my deals! Also age doesn’t mean a thing to me. ” 115

In order to hide his IP address, Abrahams used a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service that advertised it did not keep logs, one hundred sixteen along with a dynamic DNS service suggested by No-IP.com. One hundred seventeen Investigators ultimately traced the IP address back to Abrahams, discovering that a person with the same username used to register for No-IP.com had also posted on hacking forums bragging that he had infected the computer of someone who “happened to be a model.” The username in question? “Cutefuzzypuppy.” 118

Abrahams was charged with one count of computer fraud and three counts of extortion, and pleaded guilty to all charges. One hundred nineteen He was sentenced to eighteen months in prison. 120

Lucas Michael Chansler

From two thousand seven to 2010, Lucas Michael Chansler targeted almost three hundred fifty youthfull women in his sextortion ploy—so many that, after his arrest, the FBI launched a prolonged online campaign to locate the scores of chicks whom he had victimized. One hundred twenty one Agents dreamed to interview the women for information on Chansler’s case, but they also dreamed to provide closure. After all, there was no other way that victims would know that their torment had been ended for good. 122

Hiding his IP address through proxy servers, Chansler relied on catfishing to reach out to potential targets through social media. One hundred twenty three Pretending to be a teenage boy—usually interested in skateboarding—who was looking for a friendship or flirtation with the victim, Chansler would ask to movie talk with the victim and display movie of a naked boy in order to hide his identity. He asked the victims to unwrap on camera, and he secretly recorded the stream. One hundred twenty four In one case, he tricked four youthful women at a sleepover into posing for him on Stickam, a now-discontinued livestreaming service well known for the predatory behavior of some of its users and legendary as well because of its proprietor, a businessman who also managed a network of pornographic websites. One hundred twenty five Once Chansler had the movie or pictures that he desired, he threatened to release the material to the victim’s friends and family or upload it to a public website unless the victim provided him with more. One hundred twenty six In an interview with the FBI, one victim described the depression and fright caused by Chansler’s requests that she permanently be available to react to his messages: “I felt like a sub. . . . I recall just lounging in bed in muffle and just thinking. I felt like God was so disappointed in me, and I didn’t know what to do.” 127

Speaking with an FBI agent after his arrest, Chansler explained that he targeted youthful chicks because they were more likely to believe his scam. One hundred twenty eight He was charged with four counts of extortion, fourteen counts of producing child pornography, one count of receiving child pornography, and one count of possessing child pornography. One hundred twenty nine He pleaded guilty to all fourteen counts of producing child pornography and has been sentenced to one hundred five years in federal prison. 130

Ivory Dickerson and Patrick Connolly

Ivory Dickerson and Patrick Connolly never met in person, but they functioned together as a kind of sextortion team: together, the FBI claims, they targeted more than Trio,800 underage ladies. One hundred thirty one Dickerson—a civil engineer in North Carolina—and Connolly—a British military contractor working at a U.S. base in Baghdad—worked in tandem, one hundred thirty two with Connolly usually reaching out to potential victims over the internet in order to trick them into installing the malware Bifrost. One hundred thirty three Then the two would collaborate in blackmailing their victims with photos taken surreptitiously using their webcams or with private information obtained by their computers. One hundred thirty four It took four years of investigation to track them down. 135

In one case, Connolly threatened to post a girl’s email address online and to harm her junior sister unless she provided photographs. One hundred thirty six In another, he told a victim that he would make her “the most well-known chick at school” unless she provided him with pictures. “Are you sure you want to drive to school tomorrow?” he asked, claiming that he eyed her at school every day. 137

The FBI originally contacted Dickerson believing that he might be one of Connolly’s victims; they suspected that Connolly may have gained control over Dickerson’s computer and used it to attack other computers as a way of hiding his tracks. One hundred thirty eight Soon, however, they realized that Dickerson himself was also behind the attacks, discovering evidence of hacking and movies of graphic, self-produced child pornography on his computer. One hundred thirty nine Dickerson also used a program that would permit him to search the Internet for vulnerable webcams that he might be able to hack. 140

Dickerson explained to the FBI that he while he had never met Connolly in person, he had a good idea of his identity: as Dickerson’s co-conspirator, Connolly referred to himself as “Lauren,” and would often send Dickerson pictures of Connolly and information about Connolly’s life. 141

Dickerson was sentenced to one hundred ten years in prison after pleading guilty to all charges: three counts of producing child pornography, one count of possessing child pornography, and two counts of computer fraud. One hundred forty two Connolly was charged with five counts of producing child pornography, six counts of extortion, and one count of computer fraud. One hundred forty three He pleaded guilty to one count of producing child pornography, one hundred forty four and was sentenced to thirty years in prison—though the sentencing judge proclaimed, “If I could sentence you to life, I would.” 145

Michael C. Ford

Investigators originally discovered Michael C. Ford when looking into an anonymous sextortionist whom they believed might be using a State Department IP address to obscure his identity. One hundred forty six As it happened, the IP address was not a ruse: the investigation ultimately traced the sextortion back to Ford, an employee at the U.S. Embassy in London. One hundred forty seven Ford contacted his victims from his cubicle, storing elaborate spreadsheets of his victims’ emails and passwords on his work computer. One hundred forty eight His sextortion began the year he was hired at the Embassy; he was busy sextorting at work for six years without anyone at the Embassy noticing before he was ultimately arrested. 149

Ford relied on a phishing scheme to build up his victims’ passwords and steal explicit photos from their accounts, along with individual information such as the victims’ addresses and phone numbers. He sent thousands of emails posing as a member of Google’s “Account Deletion Team,” notifying victims that their Google accounts were set to be deleted and requesting their passwords in order to prevent the purging of their account. One hundred fifty (Ford saved drafts of these phishing emails on his Embassy computer.) one hundred fifty one He primarily targeted youthfull women who belonged to college sororities or aspired to be models, one hundred fifty two however in one case he sextorted a youthful man for a female friend’s passwords. One hundred fifty three The man refused to send along more pictures because, in his words, “I’m sixteen in those photos [that Ford had already obtained] and if you post/distribute child porn, you’re going to have a bad time.” Ford responded, “Do you indeed think I care?” 154

Once he obtained a victim’s passwords and accessed her account, he would menace to release her photos to family members or publish the photos on the Internet unless the victim provided him with movie of women’s switching rooms. One hundred fifty five Sometimes, he would menace to make public the victim’s contact information and address as well. One hundred fifty six In several cases he made good on his threats, at one point emailing a victim’s mother a picture of her with a note reading, “Check out your little female.” one hundred fifty seven Some of his victims began to fear for their physical safety: one woman slept with a knife under her cushion, while another considered obtaining a gun to protect herself. 158

Ford had successfully hacked into four hundred fifty computers and threatened seventy five victims at the time of his arrest. One hundred fifty nine He was indicted on nine counts of cyberstalking, seven counts of computer fraud, and one count of wire fraud, one hundred sixty and pleaded guilty to all charges. One hundred sixty one He was sentenced to fifty seven months in prison. 162

Christopher Patrick Gunn and Jeremy Brendan Sears

Christopher Patrick Gunn had two methods of catfishing youthfull chicks to extort them for sexual photos.163 In one, he would reach out through a fraudulent Facebook profile and pretend to be a fresh kid in town looking for friends—a ruse that conveniently explained away why his potential victim never would have heard of him before.164 In his 2nd method, he would contact damsels over online talking apps such as Omegle—a service that randomly pairs chatters for anonymous conversations one hundred sixty five —and pretend to be none other than pop heartthrob Justin Bieber, wandering the Internet in the hopes of meeting his fans. As Bieber, he would suggest free concert tickets or backstage passes to his youthfull fans if they sent photos or movie of their nude chests. He would then quickly stir to make ever-more-invasive requests of his victims; if they originally sent a picture of their breasts, he would thrust for a full-body photo or a photo of the chicks’ friends bare-chested as well. 166

Gunn was not alone in targeting youthful Beliebers as potential victims for sextortion. Jeremy Brendan Sears got his begin in the “Bieber Hijacking and Trolling Company,” an online group that trolled damsels’ fan-sites for Bieber and the boyband One Direction. One hundred sixty seven Soon, Sears struck out on his own, harassing the youthful website owners and spamming their pages in order to extort the damsels for explicit photos and movies. One hundred sixty eight The fans, who had invested months or even years of work in collecting pictures of their idols, were desperate to regain control over their webpages—which was exactly what made them vulnerable to Sears. One hundred sixty nine Sears would also catfish victims using fake social media profiles and post victims’ contact information online, promising to eliminate it only if the victims provided photographs or movie. One hundred seventy When interviewed by the FBI, Sears stated that his sextortion had “a very minor sexual thing to it,” but that the primary appeal was the “power” it suggested him over his victims. 171

Christopher Patrick Gunn was charged with six counts of producing child pornography, two counts of possessing child pornography, seven counts of stalking, twenty counts of extortion, and eight counts of interstate transmission in aid of extortion. One hundred seventy two He pleaded guilty to two counts of producing child pornography and four counts of extortion, one hundred seventy three and was sentenced to thirty five years in prison. 174

Jeremy Brendan Sears received a sentence of fifteen years one hundred seventy five after pleading guilty to just one count of producing child pornography. One hundred seventy six He was originally charged with sixteen counts of producing child pornography, eleven counts of distributing or receiving child pornography, one count of possessing child pornography, one count of extortion, one count of computer fraud, and one count of aggravated identity theft. 177

Richard Finkbiner

When FBI agents searched Richard Finkbiner’s rural Indiana home in 2012, they discovered more than 22,000 movie files saved on his computer, toughly half of which were sexually explicit and most of which depicted minors. One hundred seventy eight Finkbiner routinely sextorted so many people for these movies, he told the FBI, that it was unlikely for him to recognize the pics of any one particular victim that agents had introduced to him: he had too many victims to recall them individually. 179

Finkbiner would reach out to potential victims—usually teenage boys—through Omegle or other anonymous talking programs. Like Chansler, he would ask them to de-robe and perform sexual acts while he surreptitiously recorded them, hiding his own identity by displaying sexually explicit movies in place of his own camera feed. One hundred eighty Then he would menace to upload the movie to pornographic websites unless the victims emailed him—and as soon as they did so, he would menace to distribute the material to friends, family, and school acquaintances unless they agreed to become what he referred to as his “cam gimps.” one hundred eighty one In as many as three cases, Finkbiner may have used picture editing software to trick his victims into believing that he had uploaded their movies to pornographic sites. 182

At one point, a 17-year-old doll wrote to Finkbiner telling that she had attempted suicide the previous night and would attempt it again if he did not stop his requests. Finkbiner wrote back, “Glad i could help.” 183

When one boy protested against Finkbiner’s requests, Finkbiner responded, “yes it is illegal im ok with that … i wont get caught im a hacker i covered my tracks.” one hundred eighty four In fact, he made no effort to hide his IP address, and the FBI was able to trace the email and Skype accounts he used for sextortion to the petite Internet service company registered in his name. 185

Overall, Finkbiner sextorted ” “hundreds, if not thousands, of . . . minors and adults all over the world,” prosecutors claimed. One hundred eighty six Most of the victims were minors. He was charged with six counts of producing child pornography, twenty counts of interstate extortion, eight counts of interstate transmission in aid of extortion, two counts of possessing child pornography, and seven counts of stalking. One hundred eighty seven He pleaded guilty to all seven counts of stalking, two counts of producing child pornography, and fifteen counts of extortion, one hundred eighty eight and was sentenced to forty years in prison. 189

Adam Savader

Adam Savader, a college student active in Republican politics, spent the summer and fall of two thousand twelve in a prestigious position as Paul Ryan’s “sole intern” on the Romney-Ryan presidential campaign. One hundred ninety But by September 2012, he had begun sextorting, one hundred ninety one targeting youthfull women whom he knew from high school or college one hundred ninety two —one of whom had threatened to take out a restraining order against him in the past. One hundred ninety three In the case of one victim who was similarly politically active, Savader threatened to release her photos to her mother, her sorority sisters, and the Republican National Committee. One hundred ninety four He would usually goad his victims into responding to him: a typical series of messages reads, “I’m about to send those pics… Should I? If not tell me. I’m running out of patience… Response me now or pay.” 195

Savader extorted at least fifteen women in total, one hundred ninety six hacking into victims’ email and social media accounts in order to access sexually explicit photos stored there. His college and hometown connections with his victims permitted him access to their accounts, as he could reset their passwords by guessing the answers to security questions that asked about information such as high school mascots and street of residence. 197

Once he had the photos, he would contact victims through Google Voice, a service that permits users to create a fresh number from which to receive and forward calls. One hundred ninety eight Savader’s numerous Google Voice accounts permitted him to keep his cell phone number hidden from his victims, and may also have permitted him to prevent them from contacting him back in turn: Google Voice permits users to turn off call forwarding to their devices, one hundred ninety nine and one victim’s account of her failed attempts to contact Savader is consistent with Savader’s having used this function. Two hundred Savader used freshly created email accounts to register for the Google Voice numbers, two hundred one but both the forwarding number for the Google Voice accounts and the IP addresses used to create those email addresses traced directly back to Savader. 202

Savader was sentenced to two-and-a-half years on one count of cyberstalking two hundred three after pleading guilty to one count of cyberstalking and one count of extortion; two hundred four he had originally been charged with four counts of each. Two hundred five While in prison, Savader has registered a Super PAC lobbying for legislation supporting improved reintegration of previously incarcerated individuals into society. According to Savader’s father, the PAC will refrain from fundraising until his son is released from prison. 206

Rinat: Israeli case of sextortion

The problem of sextortion is not by any means limited to the United States. In 2013, a 30-year-old man was convicted in Israel of extortion, sexual harassment, and the publication of obscene material after posing as a female soldier on various social media sites and tricking youthful women into communicating with him. Under pressure, the communications became sexually explicit and exploitative, with the offender requesting nude photos and other pornographic material from at least three minors.

In one example, the perpetrator filmed a 13-year-old female minor without her skill over Skype after pressuring the lady to masturbate on camera. The youthfull female eventually attempted to end the relationship with the person she knew as “Rinat,” cutting off communication with the offender. However, the man then told her that he had recorded all of their online conversations and would publish the material if she refused to proceed their relationship. After the victim refused, the sextortionist published explicit pictures of the minor on Facebook.

In another example, the perpetrator pressed a different 13-year-old minor to engage in sexual acts over Skype. When the minor told the sextortionist that her mother was in the room, he asked and eventually persuaded his victim to pretend to switch her clothes in front of her webcam, so as not to attract the attention of her mother, and to permit him to see her naked. According to the court opinion, the victim’s mother was present in the room as she was sextorted.

The court wrote: “The thought that children are unsafe in their own home is a difficult one, and it turns out that there, in their own room in their house under the watchful eye of their parents, the appellant managed to trick them, hurt them, and cause them unimaginable harm.”

In denying the man’s appeal against the two-year prison sentence imposed on him, the Israeli Supreme Court stated, that “the appellant’s act, absent any physical contact, does not reduce the severity of the offence.” In a chilling conclusion, the court wrote: “The thought that children are unsafe in their own home is a difficult one, and it turns out that there, in their own room in their house under the watchful eye of their parents, the appellant managed to trick them, hurt them, and cause them unimaginable harm.” 207

Influence of sextortion on victims

The harm that many victims practice as a result of sextortion is, indeed, unimaginable. But it is also real. Victims of sextortion feel a justified sense of powerlessness and vulnerability: they are at the grace of their hackers. Victims have described descried feeling like a “slave” to the hackers during the sextortion scheme. Two hundred eight Victims of these schemes spend every moment in fear of the next message requiring more compromising pictures or movies, living in perpetual anxiety of the risk of public exposure. With every fresh picture sent to the hacker is the worry that it isn’t enough or that the hacker will never leave. Related is the feeling of defenselessness: the inability to reach out to others about what is going on for fear of the attacker’s retaliation. The days, weeks, and months under the sextortionist’s control can be an absolute “nightmare,” where a victim is “trapped” and can’t “talk to anyone.” two hundred nine One teenager told investigators that the practice “felt like I was being virtually raped.” 210

The traumatic effects on child victims can be particularly severe. Junior victims are sometimes paralyzed by the potential social repercussions of sextortion. One victim recounted that, as a youthfull teenager, she was “already getting taunted in middle school” and was horrified she might lose friends and become a target of brutal teenage bullying if her classmates found out what was going on. Two hundred eleven The nature of sextortion also makes for effortless victim-blaming: the victims, after all, took pictures and movies of themselves and sent them along. Why didn’t they just deny to go along with the scheme?

Martha Finnegan, an FBI accomplished in child forensics explains that this kind of psychological cruelty—forcing the victim to participate in the production of these images—can have “a devastating emotional effect” on the victims:

[T]hat’s what society doesn’t get: Yes, the chicks participated in this. But they’re children; they’re still very much victims. Even however they haven’t been touched, the trauma level we see is as severe as hands-on offenses, because a lot of these kids don’t know how to end what can go on, sometimes, for years. … And they think it’s not happening to anyone else. 212

Children are often the easiest targets of these sorts of crimes not only because of their social vulnerability, but because they often do not realize that what is happening is criminal behavior. They are often left defenseless and too panicked to admit to their parents or to anyone else what is happening. They also sometimes have no idea when threats are fully idle ones. One youthful sextortion victim complied with requests for nude photos because her attacker threatened to “blow up” her computer if she did not, and the computer was a treasured fresh Christmas present. 213

That defenselessness does not cease even in when the hacking is over and the sextortionist is prosecuted. One of Luis Mijangos’ victims described the visceral fear of her hacker that has stayed with her since, despite Mijangos’ prosecution and ultimate jail time: “He [still] haunts me every time I use the computer.” two hundred fourteen Another one of Mijangos’ victims explained that moving away from the Los Angeles area has not made her feel any safer: as long as he had an Internet connection, Mijangos was able to attack from anywhere, at any time. This is a crime from which some victims have a fine deal of trouble escaping. They carry the weight of this anxiety and distrust with them.

To make these points tangible, consider some of the victim impacts from the case studies in the previous section. In sentencing Abrahams, for example, the judge proclaimed:

Through his computer abilities, he hacked into girls’ computers and observed them in their bedrooms dressing and undressing through cameras, or webcams, on the computers. He hacked their e-mail and social media accounts, and by his own assessment attempted to make them his “slaves.” The intimidation turned to extortion when he demanded that they perform certain acts before the computer camera or face posting of their pics on the internet. He did in fact post pictures. And as one of the victims noted, she will never know for rest of her life when those pics will resurface on the internet. 215

In the Chansler case, influence statements for five victims and their family members were introduced at sentencing. One victim described herself as becoming a “hollow shell” under the onslaught of Chansler’s requests, plagued by funk attacks. Two hundred sixteen The mother of another victim explained that her daughter now becomes awkward whenever she steps out onto the street, permanently wondering if any passersby have seen her naked. Two hundred seventeen An FBI special agent assigned to the case described the situation of one youthful female who was compelled to leave school and budge hundreds of miles away out of fear for her life, returning home only when she learned from FBI agents that Chansler had been arrested. 218

Influence statements submitted in the Savader case make clear how an ever-present stream of threats can lead to victims’ psychological exhaustion. One woman characterized the practice as an unending “barrage of harassment,” leading to a “feeling of vulnerability [that] consumed almost every aspect of my life.” two hundred nineteen Another described the extensive reach of Savader’s sextortion:

The harassment invaded every part of my life. There were times when I needed to downright turn my phone off to avoid receiving continuous harassment almost every minute. There was no way to block the messages because the numbers were permanently switching. I received messages on my cell phone while at home in Pennsylvania, in the classroom in D.C., and even on vacation with my family in Florida. The fake Facebook account then began contacting my mother, stepfather, brother, beau, and best friend. The fake account sent messages to my family seeking further pictures of me. At this point, everyone in both my boyfriend’s family and mine were involved. When the texts would not stop, I was coerced to contact my cell phone provider and switch my cell phone number. 220

The sentencing transcript in the Ivory Dickerson case and the government’s sentencing memorandum in the Finkbiner case makes for particularly ugly reading. In Dickerson’s case, one victim reported that she became “afraid to go to school … afraid to walk outside” for fear that she would meet her tormenter. Two hundred twenty one The parents of a 2nd victim testified that they permanently feared for their daughter’s life: “we had no idea what would happen when she went to the school, to the store, to anywhere.” two hundred twenty two The atmosphere of fear in the family was such that this 2nd victim’s junior brother began to worry that Dickerson would come and hurt him in his sleep. 223

In Finkbiner, the government did not introduce victim influence statements. It did, however, lay out what Finkbiner made some of his victims do. In addition, as we noted above, to driving one woman to a suicide attempt, he compelled children to engage in all sorts of highly-degrading sexual activity. The following is an almost random sample:

C. Finkbiner’s Victimization of John Doe two (Count two of the Very first Information)

At the time of Finkbiner’s offense against him, John Doe two was a 14-year-old boy located in Sissonville, West Virginia. During a March Ten, 2011, movie talk session, Finkbiner demanded that John Doe two model a jock strap, dance naked, do sit-ups, masturbate and eat his ejaculate, and penetrate his pink hole with a finger. John Doe two complied with Finkbiner’s requests, which Finkbiner recorded on movie.

During a March 14, 2011, movie talk session, Finkbiner demanded that John Doe two wear brief cut-offs, unwrap naked, dance, masturbate, wear a raw t-shirt and jock strap, dance, de-robe again, do sit-ups and simulate hookup with a cushion. John Doe two again complied with Finkbiner’s requests, which Finkbiner recorded on movie.

During a March 16, 2011, movie talk session, Finkbiner demanded that John Doe two do a unclothe dance, masturbate, wear his jock strap rearwards, dance, get naked again, do push-ups and masturbate again. John Doe two again complied with Finkbiner’s requests, which Finkbiner recorded on movie.

D. Finkbiner’s Victimization of John Doe three (Count three of the Very first Information)

At the time of Finkbiner’s offense against him, John Doe three was a 14-year-old boy located in Dubuque, Iowa. During a May Ten, 2011, talk session, Finkbiner recorded a movie of John Doe three masturbating.

During another movie talk session about an hour later, John Doe three primarily refused to demonstrate Finkbiner his face on camera. Finkbiner stated that he knew John Doe three lived in Dubuque, Iowa, and threatened to send the movie to named individuals and teachers who knew John Doe Trio, and a named high school. John Doe three then agreed to serve with Finkbiner’s requests. During this talk session, Finkbiner demanded that John Doe three de-robe, dance, masturbate, and demonstrate Finkbiner his pink hole. John Doe three complied with Finkbiner’s requests, which Finkbiner recorded on movie.

E. Finkbiner’s Victimization of John Doe four (Count four of the Very first Information)

At the time of Finkbiner’s offense against him, John Doe four was a 15-year-old boy located in Sea Falls, Wisconsin. During a May 12, 2011, movie talk session, Finkbiner recorded a movie of John Doe four masturbating.

During another movie talk session about twenty minutes later, Finkbiner demanded that John Doe four be his “cam slave” and engage in extra sexually explicit conduct on movie. John Doe four primarily refused to obey. Finkbiner threatened to send the movie to individuals and teachers who knew John Doe Four, naming the individuals and a high school. John Doe four then agreed to serve with Finkbiner’s requests. Finkbiner demanded that John Doe four dance like “a stripper,” masturbate, and display Finkbiner his backdoor. Finkbiner demanded that John Doe four play with his puffies, then lay in bed and masturbate. Finkbiner then told John Doe four to ejaculate into his palm, gobble up his ejaculate and display his mouth total of ejaculate to Finkbiner on camera. John Doe four complied with Finkbiner’s requests, which Finkbiner recorded on movie.

Finkbiner then told John Doe four to contact him again the next day. John Doe four pleaded with Finkbiner not to have to engage in any more activity on camera. Finkbiner stated “complain and ill fukk u over,” “depends on u.” John Doe four then asked Finkbiner to just get it all done at that time, Finkbiner stated “ull be fine dgo do ur hw or somthing.” John Doe four continued to plead with Finkbiner, stating “no please im startled i dont wanna worry about this please.” Finkbiner did not react further to John Doe Four. 224

Conclusion

Congress should consider adopting a federal sextortion statute that addresses the specific conduct at issue in sextortion cases and treats the age of the victim as an aggravating factor, not as a core element of the offense.

The discussion above suggests a number of significant policy and social interventions. Our purpose in this paper is largely to describe a serious problem of whose existence many people are unaware. But to describe this problem is also to notice serious deficiencies in the way we are addressing the matter as a society. The following are several recommendations aimed at different levels of society:

Recommendations for lawmakers

The law presently contains two startling deficiencies that lead to serious sentencing disparities in sextortion cases. The very first is the absence of any parallel in cases involving adult victims for the severe sentencing associated with federal child pornography prosecutions. The disparity is understandable as an original matter: adult pornography is, as a general matter, constitutionally protected speech and expression, whereas the federal government has an abiding interest in protecting children against exploitation in fashions that implicate federal jurisdiction. In this context, however, as we have explained, the disparate treatment of adults and children results in a gross under-protection of adult women relative to children of either gender in the interstate coerced production of pornography. Exacerbating this problem is the relative weakness of many state laws. Some serious sextortion cases we reviewed were prosecuted at the state level as misdemeanors.

Recommendation #1: Given that these cases are numerous, many are interstate in nature, and most being prosecuted federally anyway, Congress should consider adopting a federal sextortion statute that addresses the specific conduct at issue in sextortion cases and does not treat the age of the victim as a core element of the offense. Specifically, as we lay out in greater depth in a separate paper, “Closing the Sextortion Sentencing Gap,” we believe this statute should combine elements of the federal interstate extortion statute with elements of the aggravated sexual manhandle statute and have sentencing that parallels physical-world sexual assaults.

Recommendation #Two: State lawmakers should likewise adopt strong statutes with criminal penalties commensurate with the harm sextortion cases do. More broadly, states should cautiously review their statutes relative to the production and distribution of non-consensual pornography. Many states have no such laws. Others have laws of inadequate force. In our view, states should both criminalize the production and distribution of nonconsensual pornography and give victims of it reasonable civil remedies against their victimizers. In combination with a federal statute, this would create a number of avenues for victims to pursue.

Recommendations for federal authorities

Brief of the adoption of fresh legislation, there are significant steps available to the Justice Department and the FBI to take administratively. One striking feature of the sextortion problem is that nobody knows how widespread or serious it is, because nobody publishes good data on sextortion cases at either the state or federal levels. The lack of readily available data takes place even as the FBI has repeatedly warned of the problem and even as the Justice Department has announced Project Safe Childhood, which the department describes as “a Department of Justice initiative launched in two thousand six to combat the proliferation of technology-facilitated crimes involving the sexual exploitation of children.”[225] A number of Justice Department press releases in sextortion cases describe the prosecutions in question as taking place under the Project Safe Childhood umbrella. It is striking that even the project under which sextortion prosecutions take place cannot readily identify or count them.

Moreover, the federal system is notably uneven in its concentrate on sextortion cases. We think it unlikely that four of our cases come each from such jurisdictions as the Central District of California, the Middle District of Florida, and the Northern District of Georgia because these jurisdictions are particularly rife with sextortionists. We suspect, moreover, that the reason three of our cases come from state court in Wisconsin has more to do with the attention in that state of a single local prosecutor named Erin Karshen—who cares about the issue—than with the prevalence of the offense in Milwaukee. We also suspect that the apparent absence of cases (at least in our dataset) from such powerhouse prosecutorial districts as the Southern and Eastern Districts of Fresh York does not reflect the fact that Fresh York City is a sextortion-free zone.

Recommendation #Trio: The federal government should develop and maintain sturdy data on federal prosecutions of sextortion and other cases involving the non-consensual production of pornography and cyberstalking. It should not wait to do so until Congress passes statutes specifically criminalizing sextortion. The conduct is all already covered by federal statutes; it is mostly prosecuted, as we have seen, in federal court. Having access to good data on federal treating of these cases is critical both to raising awareness of the problem and to developing more refined statutory instruments for addressing it.

Recommendation #Four: U.S. Attorneys and FBI Special Agents in Charge in jurisdictions which have not seen these cases should not conclude that they are not taking place but that they have most likely overlooked them. Prosecutors and investigators should operate on the presumption that sextortion is taking place everywhere and should devote human resources to investigating and prosecuting sextortion cases as part of their broader concentrate on child exploitation.

Recommendation #Five: They should also adopt as policy what is already de facto practice: Federal authorities, being both better placed for interstate and international investigations than state or local authorities and having the stronger laws and penalties, should presume—in contrast to many other hookup crimes cases—that they are an investigative and prosecutorial front line. Unlike physical sexual assaults, which are presumptively local in nature, sextortions take place in a domain that is generally non-local and often requires elaborate interjurisdictional machinations and technical forensics. These cases are, much of the time, best treated at the federal level.

Recommendations for device manufacturers and Internet companies

Webcams are a fine innovation for human connectivity. They are also often insecure and suggest sextortionists and other bad cyber actors literal visibility into the activity of non-consenting targets. Similarly, relatively lax password controls—and relatively elementary password recovery—on social media platforms makes hacking accounts too effortless.

Recommendation #6: Hardware manufacturers should build into computers effortless slip-over webcam masks that permit users to physically cover their computers’ camera when it is not in use. More generally, hardware manufacturers should consider whether the security risks of software-driven webcams exceed the convenience benefits and whether a physical switch disabling webcams should be the preferred norm. By one means or another, computer manufacturers should make it convenient and effortless to physically disable when not in use those hardware devices that hackers can use to turn computers into surveillance devices.

Recommendation #7: Account hacking would be far more difficult if Internet and social media companies required the use of strong passwords and made those passwords recoverable based on criteria other than data hometown stalkers know well or can guess lightly.

Recommendations for parents and teachers and victims

One of the factors that makes sextortion cases, particularly those involving child victims, difficult to uncover is the intergenerational gap in sexual mores concerning online activities. Teenagers often send nude pictures of themselves to one another. Their parents find this shocking. And this gap in attitude inhibits communication inbetween generations when what a teenager may regard as harmless sexting all of a sudden turns very ugly.

Yet one of the features of these cases that hops out at even a casual reader is how much better those victims who have an adult to turn to fare than those who are too abjected to tell a parent or a teacher what is happening to them. Parents are better placed to activate law enforcement than are children. And every sextortionist who gets caught has one thing in common: a victim who talked to someone that victim determined to trust. This observation has significant process implications.

Recommendation #8: It is critically significant for parents and teachers to establish with their children a no-judgment, no-questions reporting regime for sexual exploitation online. Children need to understand that there are ways out of the traps the sextortionists have them in. And responsible adults need to create mechanisms the children they are responsible for feel safe using when they are threatened.

Eventually, there is one critical recommendation with respect to victims of sextortion, both those presently subject to it and those who have been victimized in this past.

Recommendation #9: Victims need to be enabled to come forward and, to the extent they wish, speak up. Current victims of sextortion may or may not understand that the person victimizing them may also be doing the same thing to literally hundreds of other people and will not stop until someone gets law enforcement involved. Past victims have a role to play in making current victims understand that they are experiencing something that is both common and not their fault. Yet it can be utterly difficult for victims to come forward, especially in the absence of assurances that the law will protect them and that law enforcement will treat them with respect and dignity. In this context, it is especially troubling that child pornography laws in many jurisdictions have been used to penalize minors for creating pics of themselves—a reality that means that minor victims potentially put themselves in legal jeopardy by coming forward. Only by making it possible to talk about sextortion will society lessen the power of those who engage in it.

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