Online predators prey on young athletes using sextortion
A Michigan teen was goaded into sharing an intimate photo that scammers threatened to expose unless he paid up.
THE INGREDIENTS OF Jordan's life -- small-town athletic stardom, close-knit rural background, popularity and having a steady girlfriend -- appear to have made him the perfect target for a new kind of crime, dubbed "financial sextortion" by the FBI.
Predators from thousands of miles away in Nigeria had zeroed in on Jordan as a source of easy money through internet blackmail. ESPN reviewed court records, police reports and previous news accounts to examine how loosely organized overseas criminal organizations entrap and extort American teens with terrifying, extreme and even deadly aggressiveness.
This predatory web has snared victims from all kinds of backgrounds. But growing numbers of young, male athletes are particularly vulnerable because of both their elevated social status locally and the desire to project a perfect image for potential college recruitment, according to Abbigail Beccaccio, the chief of the FBI's Child Exploitation Operational Unit.
"If you look at our numbers and you look at how the bad actors are targeting victims, your school athletes are going to have a larger [online] footprint," Beccaccio said. "It is going to make them more vulnerable to these types of targeted attacks. They have more to lose than another individual. ... They're looking at being scouted. They're putting videos of their [highlights] out on social media."
Since 2021, online sextortion has led to tens of thousands of cases and more than $65 million in losses, according to the FBI. More tragically, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reports, it has led to over three dozen suicides.
And that's just the ones they know about.
