Revealed: Foreign crime gangs are blackmailing teenagers with explicit photos - and AI is making the problem worse

10 March 2025, 08:02

Online Safety Day is today, 10th March from 7am to midnight on LBC, available across the UK on Global Player on your smart speaker, iOS or Android device; on DAB digital radio and TV, at LBC.co.uk and in London on 97.3 FM.

Children are being targeted by international criminal gangs who trick them into taking explicit pictures in a bid to financially extort them, LBC has been told.

Will Gardner, CEO of Childnet, a charity that works with social media companies and governments to protect kids online, has told LBC of the “sextortion” children are facing at the hands of organised criminal gangs.

These children, often older teenagers, are being tricked into sending illegal images by gangs posing as friends or partners.

When they send a picture, they are told it will be shared with their friends, family and classmates if cash isn’t handed over.

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And with the rise of generative AI, which allows someone to forge a “deepfake” digital image of anyone online, children may even be exploited if they choose not to send a picture, Mr Gardner warned.

“There are a number of significant risks and we asked young people recently, ‘which area of your online lives do you like more support with?’ They spoke about scams,” Mr Gardner told us.

Older teenagers have explicitly highlighted the growing amount of “sextortion” happening in online spaces, he said.

“There's a growing concern, a growing number of cases in relation to financial sextortion, which has happened over the last few years. So that's talking about slightly older children, sort of teenagers.

“A scenario may be, It's a girl and she makes friends and starts being flirty with a boy.

“That behaviour leads to a sharing of an image and encouraging the boy to share something back.

“And the moment he does that, he’s told ‘I'm going to circulate this to your friends, family network, your social media network, unless you pay.’

“So it always starts as a scam, but it's absolutely exploitation and abuse. It's the financially motivated sexual extortion of young people organised by criminal gangs in different parts of the world.”

There are a number of things parents can do if they fear their child may have fallen foul to one of the “sextortion” scams, he said.

“We always push for in the kind of advice we give to parents and carers is about trying to maintain the channels of communication and conversations.

“It is very difficult to be up to date in relation to the new tech, but there are ways in which you can be asking your child to talk to you about tech.

“I think one of the challenges is when, when adults talk to children about technology or social media, I think the young people are expecting it just to be purely about risks and negatives.

“And that doesn't really reflect young people's experience of technology.

“That's what we do when we go into schools. Talk about what they love, what they are doing right now and what they’d like to share.”

From that, Mr Gardner told us, parents can create a positive relationship between them, their child and technology.

These scams often take place on social media platforms such as Facebook, X and Instagram.

But should these social media companies bear criminal responsibility if images of children are circulated by gangs on their platforms?

“Social media companies, when they are aware that this behaviour has happened, will have to take action,” Mr Gardner said.

“You know, this is illegal activity and so there are things that they can do there for anybody who is in this situation, I would want to stress that there are services there that can help.

“I can specifically mention Report Remove, which is run by the Internet Watch Foundation and Childline, another service called Take it down, which is run by a US body and enables people to get a hash or a QR code of f the image that they have shared and that hash will allow a company to prevent it being shared elsewhere online.

“And social media companies are participating in these programmes, so there are steps that can be taken and the industry is trying to support in this way.”

While lonely or vulnerable children are at high risk of “sextortion” scams, any young person can fall victim to them, he added.

“You need to think that this could be any child,” Mr Gardner said.

“ So I don't think there's any kind of characteristics that you can use here to kind of say, well, that's not going to happen to, to this child or, or that one.

“It's not an exclusive. These aren't exclusive risks and any of the risks online are not exclusive.

“So I think we need to go at that with this mindset. It can be that some children who are more vulnerable offline are more vulnerable online. Absolutely. And there's research which, which does talk to that, but I think in terms of looking to provide education, in terms of prevention and responsive support, we need to be thinking of all children.”