USA Today
By Kevin Johnson
December 19, 2022
Citing an “explosion” of online sextortion cases involving children, federal authorities Monday issued an unusual national public safety alert in an attempt to intervene in increasingly aggressive schemes linked to more than a dozen suicides in the past year.
At least 3,000 victims, primarily boys, have been identified as targets in operations largely originating outside the U.S., in which children are being coerced into sending explicit images online and then extorted for money.