Sextorters are targeting young boys online — and flaunting how rich the scam is making them

Warning: This story deals with suicide.

For self-proclaimed scammer "John," luring foreigners into sending him money is a full-time job.

"We look for them through Facebook or Instagram," he told CBC's Marketplace. "We look through celebrities' accounts, followers' accounts, then we add them."

He's one of Nigeria's "Yahoo Boys," whose scams include coercing teens into sending nude photos of themselves, then using that to blackmail them for money.

John, which is not his real name, lives in Lagos, and agreed to speak to Marketplace confidentially so that we could get insight into how these scammers are able to do what they do.

• For the full investigation, watch 'The Sextortion Network' on Friday at 8 p.m. (8:30 in N.L.) on YouTube, CBC TV and CBC Gem.

Experts say this type of sexual extortion — or sextortion — scheme has exploded in Canada since 2021. CBC was able to verify that more than 40 suicides across North America, Australia and U.K. in the last four years were linked to sextortion — five of them in Canada.

"I think this is the worst scam in the world," said Paul Raffile, a sextortion and cybercrime researcher based in Connecticut. "There is no other scam that involves targeting children, coercing them into a sexually compromising situation, exploiting them, blackmailing them. There's no other scams that I think even compare to this."

Yet sextortion remains so lucrative that scammers like the Yahoo Boys flaunt their wealth online with fancy cars, clothes and cash. Not only that, they share resources on WhatsApp and Telegram for how to better blackmail teens in Canada and elsewhere — including how-to manuals, scripts to follow, even apps to use, all with the goal of getting paid.

When Marketplace asked John if he ever thinks about the suffering of his victims, he said, "I don't know what to answer to that."

"It's painful to see that this crime is still happening," said Raffile. "There are all these [preventative] measures that could have been put in place that would have stopped [sextortion] from happening."

Sextortion is a scam Ryan Cleland knows all too well — because his son Carson was a victim.

In 2023, 12-year-old Carson was contacted by someone on Snapchat who posed as a girl around his age. They started chatting, and quickly the conversation turned sexual. They convinced him to send nude images.

Then the blackmail began. They asked for gift cards, which are commonly requested because they're difficult to track. Carson bought one and tried it, but the sextorter said it didn't work.

Less than 12 hours after first being contacted by his sextorter, Carson died by suicide.

"He was the wackiest, goofiest, silliest kid, and it was infectious. His laugh would make you smile and it would pull you right into a conversation with him," said Cleland, who lives in Prince George, B.C.

Eighty-five per cent of sextortion victims are boys, according to new data from the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.

"[Carson] knew what to do," said Cleland, who had even spoken with his son about how to handle being extorted if images of him ever got into the wrong hands. "He just couldn't think past his fears. He just panicked."

The dollar amount the extortionist demanded from Carson was barely enough to buy a new videogame.

"Twenty-five f–king dollars," his father said.

Carson wasn't the only one victimized in his school. Some of his classmates were also targeted by sextorters. Raffile says that's part of the scammers' strategy to get their victims' guard down.

"They will target a specific high school, a specific university, and just add everybody from the sports team rosters," Raffile said. "It makes their account seem more legitimate when you have 20 mutual followers or connections with someone."

To test the social media guardrails against sextortion, Marketplace journalists created three fake profiles on Instagram, posing as teen boys by using a photo-editing app to alter their faces. To make the accounts look authentic, they created dozens of other profiles to fill out their friends list, and began following a handful of accounts, appearing in the followers lists that Raffile says sextorters are suspected to frequent.

Within 24 hours, our team was targeted by seven accounts that requested nudes. One account tried to sextort Marketplace journalists even though we never sent a nude, superimposing pictures of penises next to a selfie we sent the account earlier.

Raffile reviewed all seven conversations. He'd even seen the photo associated with one account before.

"This, with 100 per cent certainty, is a sextorter," Raffile said.

Experts like Raffile say social media companies have repeatedly punted on taking responsibility and implementing protections that could save lives — such as verifying user identities, blocking the friend list of teen accounts so sextorters can't use them as leverage, and preventing nude images from being sent from teen accounts at all.

"We know that the primary source of leverage that these criminals use is the followers lists," said Raffile. "The moment that a victim accepts the criminal's follow request, their entire social network is compromised."

He adds that social media companies need to stop allowing their users to "create any identity they want to be." He says companies aren't motivated to stop fake accounts from being created.

"These platforms make money by the number of monthly active users on their platform," he said.

A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Instagram, denied the claim they don't deter fake accounts. They told CBC via email that they removed the accounts we connected with for violating their policies, and in 2024 removed more than 60,000 accounts in Nigeria they say were trying to target people with sextortion scams.

The spokesperson also said that teen accounts by default can only receive messages from accounts they follow or have connected with before.

They added that it's only possible for others to see the followers of a private account if the owner accepts a follow request from the other account.

During the federal election earlier this year, Prime Minister Mark Carney campaigned on bringing back the Online Harms Act, a bill designed to protect kids from exploitation like sextortion.

In an interview with Marketplace, Justice Minister Sean Fraser says his government will table new legislation specifically addressing online sextortion, non-consensual sharing of deep fake nudes and child luring in the fall.

He says these measures will be in addition to new tools for law enforcement to "prevent this crime on top of the efforts to more severely punish these heinous criminals."

"Dealing with the loss of a child is the most profound grief that a family can experience," Fraser said. "We want to do what we can as a federal government to change the laws where they are not working, so more families will have protection that perhaps would have saved lives."

Ryan Cleland says further protections are needed to curb the scam that victimized his son.

"Until you can honestly tell me that the kids in this world are safe from predators like this, then it'll never be enough."

On Oct. 1, Cleland filed a lawsuit against Snapchat. The statement of claim said the platform intentionally attracts minors and implements "ineffectual parental controls."

Snapchat has not responded to Cleland's allegations.

The platform told Marketplace that sextortion is "horrific" and that they are "committed to enhancing our existing tools and developing new ones to help combat it."

Raffile says a lot of the financial sextortion scams right now "are coming from West Africa, specifically Nigeria."

Since January, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in Nigeria has arrested more than 2,000 internet fraudsters in the country, according to press releases on their website. A joint investigation by the RCMP, the FBI and Nigerian police resulted in the arrest of one person connected to sextortion in Canada.

Yet resources for how to sextort others proliferate online. Marketplace went undercover in dozens of WhatsApp and Telegram chats where people shared tutorials and resources on how to run a wide variety of scams, including "bm," or blackmail.

The channels are run by Yahoo Boys who want to recruit others, and Marketplace found some who offered "VIP" resources — for a price.

Resources in these channels include scripts that tell sextorters exactly how to lure victims into sending nudes, as well as apps that create fake news stories to trick victims into thinking the media is reporting on them, in order to put pressure them to send money.

Many of the conversations Marketplace journalists had with sextorters online followed these scripts, and many are hosted on a platform called Scribd.

When Marketplace contacted Scribd about these scripts, a spokesperson said they violate their community guidelines, and "never should have appeared on our platform."

"As soon as we were made aware, we acted immediately to remove the material and suspend the account responsible. We also conducted a comprehensive sweep to identify and take down any related content."

Meta, which also owns WhatsApp, told Marketplace that when they find groups violating their policies, they take enforcement action, which may include banning users and suspending groups.

Telegram says content encouraging fraud is explicitly forbidden on their platform, and is removed when it's discovered. They add "it is impossible for any platform to completely remove criminal content, just as it is impossible to completely eliminate crime in any city despite active policing."

Marketplace spoke with another sextortion victim who we're calling Kyle. He agreed to talk with us confidentially, because he fears being revictimized.

"I was suicidal for a very good length of time," he said. But he wants kids who are experiencing what Carson experienced to realize there's life after sextortion.

"There will be people who love you, people who do care about you, even if you might not know that, there is someone who would care enough to understand."

If you or someone you know is struggling, here's where to look for help: