Scams are usually financial crimes, but they’re almost always about more than money.

When a grifter tricks somebody into pre-paying a tax for a fake lottery win, or writing a check to a bogus charity, or wiring cash to bail a supposedly wayward grandchild out of a (nonexistent) Mexican jail, the loss runs deeper than a drained bank account. Confidence, trust, self-respect; all are just some of the things the scammer takes from the scammee.

That dynamic can be even more powerful when the victim is a kid and the scam is about sex.

That’s certainly true of an internet crime known as “sextortion.” The scam is a fast-growing slice of the broader world of pedophiles using the internet to exploit children, and investigators say the stakes, for the kids who are targeted, can be life-changing.

“It just can take away … so much,” said Tory Torres, a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations who looks into local sextortion cases as a member of the Orange County Child Exploitation Task Force.

“A lot of victims have contemplated or actually taken their lives.”

The list of sextortion victims has exploded since the start of the pandemic.

Last year, the FBI issued a report that described sextortion as “a growing threat,” noting that the agency investigated roughly 1,000 cases a month for much of 2021 through early 2023, and that cases had jumped by about 20% during the last six months of that period. The agency also said at least 20 suicides were connected to incidents of sextortion.

Torres offered a different batch of data. From 2023 to 2024, the number of national cyber tips connected to sextortion more than doubled, from 186,800 to 456,000. She said those numbers reflect the crime becoming more common, and more people recognizing the crime for what it is.

It’s also likely that today even more people are being targeted.

Torres said so far this year her office has been investigating about 10 sextortion cases a month just in Orange County, up from about 25 cases all of last year. She estimates that at any given time at least a dozen local children – mostly boys between the ages of 14 and 17 – are being targeted in sextortion scams.

“Last week, my team and I were working on one case and we got three more leads while we were out,” Torres said. “It’s definitely growing.”

It’s also part of a grim trend that’s seen growth in seemingly all manner of child abuse.

Child labor trafficking has exploded in recent years. Same for underage sex trafficking. And, over a longer period, the internet has become an ever-expanding repository for sexually explicit images and videos involving children. In 2012, the FBI estimated there were about 450,000 such files online in the United States; by the early 2020s, the estimate was up to 90 million.

Sextortion, just one slice of that trend, works like this:

An adult predator creates a fake online persona, typically as an attractive teenager, to entice a real teenager or tween. After a connection and trust (and/or lust) have been established – usually on social media, such as Instagram and Snapchat, or in the chat options connected to online games like Fortnite or Call of Duty – the fake teen convinces the real teen to create some sexually explicit photos or video, and to send that material their way.

After that, one of two things is likely to happen.

If the predator is motivated by sex, they’ll probably share the photos or videos with other pedophiles. They also might keep the fake romance alive in order to get more material or eventually meet up with the victim in real life.

If the predator is motivated by money, the relationship, such as it was, will end. In its place the predator will make a threat, telling the victim that if they don’t send a gift card or cryptocurrency or some money via an online app, they’ll share the photo or video with the victim’s parents or friends or coaches, a list that’s often easy to track through social media. Typically, the predator also will set a deadline, saying they’ll hit the send button if money isn’t delivered by a certain day and time.

The amounts aren’t huge, from as little as $20 to about $2,000, though scammers often are trolling multiple victims so their take can be bigger than the numbers might suggest.

Still, if the money isn’t life-changing, the pressure can be. Even in a world where everyone from presidents to sports stars have been enmeshed in a dizzying array of public sex scandals, shame remains a powerful force — at least, it is for the young victims of sextortion.

“Most of the kids we see are terrified of their parents’ reaction,” said Sherri Harris, a victim assistant specialist with Homeland Security, who works with families touched by online child exploitation.

“That’s the main reason kids are reluctant to come forward. They realized they made a mistake and they don’t want to see the disappointment their parents might express. It’s why, even as as the investigators are talking with the kids, we’re talking to the parents…  letting them know not to victim-shame.

“We really try to hammer that in,” Harris added. “These kids are victims of a crime.”

A crime that, for now, often goes unpunished.

Most financially motivated sextortionists operate outside the United States, often in West Africa or Asia, according to the FBI report. That puts those scammers beyond the reach of U.S. law.

It also means that for Torres and other investigators the first contact with victims and their families is usually about ending the crime and offering a path for the victim to recover, not to launch a criminal investigation.

“When I get to the family, I get straight to why I’m there. We explain that we have some information that suggests your child might be the victim of sextortion, and that we’re there to confirm a few things. We also explain that there are resources, counselors, who can help them if they want that,” Torres said.

“If I don’t think there’s going to be a case to prosecute, I also explain that right away,” she added. “You don’t want people to have false hope about that.”

But if technology is helping sextortion – artificial intelligence, in particular, is making it easier for scammers to entrap victims – technology and technology-related laws also are making it easier for investigators to track down explicit material.

For example, U.S.-based electronic service providers (the world of companies that require users to log in to get access to the internet) are required, by law, to alert authorities when an account sends or receives or even holds sexually explicit material involving children. Those alerts often kick off the cyber tips that Torres and others can follow up.

Also, an agency that tracks crimes against kids, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, is working with Homeland Security and others to create a database of child sexual abuse material (the term investigators prefer over “child pornography” because the latter erroneously implies the victim is somehow complicit in the crime) to help make investigations easier. Every image in the database is issued individual coding that serves as an online fingerprint, making it easier to track images shared or kept by one or more users.

Torres and other investigators need that kind of technology, and information from the victims, build legal cases against sexually motivated scammers. A strong case includes as much factual detail as possible about the online contact, along with lots of softer information, such as what the victim believed was happening — and how they felt — during their conversations with the scammer.

“In cases where we have a suspect in the United States, and where we think we can prosecute someone, we set up the victim and his family with a forensic interview,” Torres said.

“These are specialists who are trained in talking with children, or any victim, about sex crimes. And we connect the families with victim assistance specialists, who can help them with our case and with their recovery.”

The local task force Torres works on, which includes members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, has been connected to several high-profile prosecutions of sexually motivated scammers. One case ended in September, when Siu Kong Sit, a former robotics coach and teacher at Beckman High, was sentenced to 17 years in prison for creating and collecting explicit material of students. Torres said she is working on three other cases involving men in Orange County who have been accused of coercing children to provide them with explicit material.

Torres suggested another technology trend – the rise of artificial intelligence – might, inadvertently, offer a sliver of optimism about the impact of sextortion.

So many images are now circulating online, and so many faces, famous and otherwise, have been falsely connected to explicit material via AI, that a growing number of tech-savvy teens are becoming numb to sextortion threats. When scammers say they’ll share explicit images unless they get some money, some victims shrug instead of paying up.

“A couple years ago, most victims were paying off the scammer,” Torres said. “Now, that’s not always the case.”

Torres suggested it’s part of a broader cultural shift in attitude about children and sex crimes.

“There’s a lot less stigma around sex abuse,” she said. “Especially when you’re a minor; you have no consent. And people are starting to recognize that, now, I think.”

For Torres, 35, who grew up in San Diego, the issue is personal. She said her older brother was molested as a child, but he didn’t tell anybody until he was in his late teens. Earlier this year, at age 37, he took his life.

“The time frame that we grew up in, (abuse) was still very hush-hush,” Torres said.

“Not, today. Today, I think, the outcome in his case would be different,” she added.

“At least I hope it would.”