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Scammers use AI for deepfakes, chatbots, and data scraping in Instagram sextortion scams, blackmailing victims with fake or stolen explicit content.
Since its early inceptions in the days of the cliche “Nigerian diamond” spam emails, the art of online scamming has evolved significantly as the internet has become more integrated with everyday life. From bots spamming messages containing fake website links to gain access to your PC, or entire call centres across the world dedicated to gaining access to your personal information, it is sad to say that the threat scammers pose to online life continues to become even more potent. That said, one relatively recent, though disturbingly malicious, means of online blackmail is on the rise across most social media sites: sextortion.
Sextortion is a type of cybercrime that involves the transfer of sexual images between a victim and a scammer- often using various means to disguise themselves as a romantic partner or a potential mate. While online catfishing is a well-documented and disturbing frequent form of scam, with scammers creating false personalities, and seducing victims over a long period of time before cashing in on that relationship to make an urgent financial request, these sorts of practices have clearly evolved to become a far more malicious and, regrettably, lucrative crime.
With access to explicit images of their victim, the scammer uses these photos to blackmail the user, threatening to distribute them across the internet, or even to directly share them with friends and family, if a ransom payment is not received.
Sextortion is currently enjoying a massive rise, with the American Federal Bureau of Investigation having commissioned a special report into its dramatic surge in frequency across North America and parts of Europe. This rise is largely due to three factors: new technologies, increased organisation and a change in victim demographic.
Deepfake technology has existed for some time- one could go as far back as 1994 to the film Forrest Gump to see how old the technology of manipulating images to create an illusion of speech is. However, it has never really been effectively integrated into scamming. For example, in the practice of catfish scams mentioned previously, little to no deepfaking is ever involved- a scammer will likely just pick one or two stock photos off of the internet and then set up a Facebook or Instagram page pretending to be that person. However, the increasing sophistication of deepfake technology has enabled this type of scam to become a lot more convincing.
Part of this is driven by AI. AI image generation through sites such as Midjourney are certainly impressive, as they can clearly take a prompt to create an image that, in some instances, can be quite convincing. Combine this with chatbots that can engage with a user and then learn from their conversations- for example, mirroring usage of slang or even going as far as to create in-jokes that the AI can reference- and you can have a seriously convincing scam. Indeed, this practice has been growing online, with there being multiple sites that can create an AI to simulate a relationship, including real-time face-swapping technology which can even simulate phone or videocalls. As a result, for scammers, this offers a real opportunity to use these cutting-edge, convincing technologies and to turn them into a force of evil.
In light of the new potential for a more sophisticated type of scam, many new and highly organised groups have emerged in order to take advantage of this. Among the most documented of their scammer guilds are the “Yahoo Boys”. Primarily based in Nigeria, although with ‘bases’ across West Africa, the Yahoo Boys have largely been responsible for this uptick in cybercrime, by creating AI models that make sextortion scam scarily easy to pull off. With these advanced technologies, the group have refined their practices so that all they need to pull off what can often be a very lucrative scam is a phone and a laptop. In a country with a rapidly growing population and a rising unemployment rate, these groups are thus able to offer those willing to engage in ethically dubious activities the opportunity to make serious money. Clearly the impact of this particular group has been felt, with local musicians writing songs about the group, boosting their clout.
By far the most momentous shift in the sextortion racket over the past few years has been a colossal shift in victim age demographic Firstly, scamming victims generally tend to be older people, who are largely less internet literate and therefore are more susceptible to scam artists. Indeed, this was felt more acutely in the category of romance scams, as scammers would often specifically target older widows or single people who seemed more desperate for companionship, and thus more gullible for their schemes. However, the shift in age demographics has been colossal, with sextortion scams now largely targeting underage students. Obviously, this makes the scams far more malicious, as it means the scammers are essentially harvesting and threatening to distribute child pornography, but it also makes them more lucrative. Unlike the elderly, who are largely retired and therefore the only real threat to having their illicit photos leaked would be reputational, younger people (the majority of whom tend to be students at college or high school levels) will have career aspirations and social circles to which their digital footprint is directly tied to, and thus the risk of having their nude photos spread across the internet would mean social and career suicide. As a result, while they might have access to less disposable income to offer these scammers, they provide far more lucrative long-term opportunities to these individuals.
These three factors combined have resulted in a massive surge in sextortion scams. In July of 2024, Meta shut down 63,000 Instagram accounts connected to organised sextortion scams (2,500 of these having direct links to the “Yahoo Boys” network) showing how widespread the sextortion industry has become. Indeed, investigative journalists have shown just how lucrative some of these networks have become, with some high-level sextortion groups raking in up to £100,000 a month, and one Nigerian man (who was noted as a leader of the Yahoo Boys network) was said to have made up to $2.5 million throughout his sextortion career. This shows just how much money can be made from this industry, and as technologies advance and the practice becomes even easier, this can be expected to rise.
More distressingly, however, is the profound human impact of sextortion scams. With the change in demographic to target younger persons, paired with the increased targeting of young men (who, on average, have higher suicide rates than their female counterparts), the rise of sextortion has had serious ramifications on the mental health of young people. Across the United States over the last two years, 27 suicides have been linked directly to sextortion, and in a vast majority of these incidents identifying- let alone extraditing and prosecuting- the perpetrator is nigh impossible. Indeed, with sextortion figures having doubled since last year, the proportion of these cases that result in suicides seems likely to rise as well.
International authorities have yet to take comprehensive action regarding the online policing of sextortion cases. Instead, many national authorities, including the FBI, have been issuing their own advice to citizens on how to handle sextortion scams and other such cybercrimes. However, punishing perpetrators has been rare- since the rise began in 2023, there have only been 3 incidents of major offenders being extradited from Nigeria to face the ramifications of their actions. As a result, policing these incidents is largely left to social media companies like Meta, who run the platforms from which these criminals run their scams. While some large-scale action has been taken to remove the ability for scammers to use their platforms, the speed at which these cases can unfold is truly horrifying. For example, in the case of Jordan Buta, it took just 6 hours for a conversation with a scammer to begin, for a sexual photo to be sent, for a blackmail request to be issued and then for Jordan, at the age of 17, to ultimately take his own life. As a result, while efforts by social media platforms to combat scam accounts are commendable, it goes without saying that greater preventative measures will need to be explored, by both social media companies to flag potential scam accounts and shut them down before they can use these false personalities to hurt people, or for governments to get serious about locating, extraditing and prosecuting all the perpetrators to create a deterrent effect to those who idolise cybercriminal networks like the Yahoo Boys.
Ultimately, sextortion is yet another iteration of the same problem: historically, policing cybercrime is incredibly difficult, and while the internet is full of vigilantes who make an effort to harass scammers as much as possible, this is a practice derived from the sad fact that most scammers will never see the inside of a court, much less the inside of a jail cell. That said, while sextortion may simply be part of a wider, systematic issue, it represents a sinister evolution that poses a unique threat to people everywhere, and will hopefully heighten calls for proper cyber policing and bringing scammers to justice for their actions.
