FBI, This Week: Sextortion Activity on the Rise

Audio Transcript

Mollie Halpern: The FBI is seeing a significant increase in activity involving sextortion—a federal crime that happens when an adult coerces a child to produce sexually explicit photographs or video of themselves and then send it to them over the Internet.

Violent Crimes Against Children and Human Trafficking Assistant Section Chief Brian Herrick says the volume of child pornography is increasing but so is the percentage of successful prosecutions against criminals producing it.

Brian Herrick: We're prosecuting 60 percent more people for the production of child pornography than we were five years ago.

Halpern: The FBI is also seeing high numbers of victims in its sextortion cases.

Herrick: Troubling thing that we're seeing in these cases is that when we arrest the subject, we're finding they're not just extorting one, two, and three kids, but they're extorting 30, 40, 100, 200, 300 kids.

Halpern: Learn how parents and caregivers can protect their children from sextortion on fbi.gov. Report sextortion to your local FBI field office or online at tips.fbi.gov. With FBI, This Week, I’m Mollie Halpern of the Bureau.