The FBI has announced the arrest of 22 Nigerians

The FBI, in collaboration with partners, conducted interviews at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) offices located in Lagos, Nigeria. 

The FBI has announced the arrest of 22 Nigerians purportedly involved in a financially driven sextortion scheme that has been associated with over 20 teen suicides in the United States since 2021. This information was released in a statement on the agency's website. According to the report published on Thursday, April 24, these arrests were part of an unprecedented global operation, dubbed Operation Artemis, executed in partnership with law enforcement agencies in Canada, Australia, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom. Initiated nearly two years ago, Operation Artemis was launched after the FBI received thousands of reports regarding teenage boys being coerced into sharing sexually explicit images online, only to be extorted with threats of exposure unless they paid. 

"As a result of Operation Artemis, FBI investigations led to the arrest of 22 Nigerians, including one individual linked to an American victim who subsequently took their own life," stated the FBI. Within these sextortion schemes, minors—often boys—are approached online by individuals impersonating young women who convince them to share nude photographs. Once the victims comply, they are pressured to send money to avoid the release of the images. Investigators found that even when victims do pay, the demands frequently continue, and threats escalate. "Analysis of victims' phones and social media accounts uncovered heartbreaking accounts of young children undergoing distressing negotiations to safeguard their privacy," the FBI reported. 

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) recorded more than 34,000 sextortion victims in 2023, which rose to over 54,000 last year, resulting in financial losses nearing $65 million over the past two years. From October 2021 to March 2023, the FBI, along with Homeland Security Investigations and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), identified over 12,600 minors—predominantly boys—who fell prey to sextortion schemes. The NCMEC indicated a significant rise with 26,718 reports of financial sextortion in 2023, compared to 10,731 in 2022. The Australian Federal Police also reported around 300 new sextortion cases each month. In Nigeria, FBI Special Agent Matthew Crowley interviewed suspects to discern their motivations for choosing sextortion over other financial scams, such as romance fraud or business email compromise. "One suspect remarked, 'It's easy money. If I don't get results, I can just move on to the next one,'" Crowley shared. "It's understandable why they would pursue this route; they could target 40 victims in a day while working with multiple cases simultaneously. If just three of those 40 pay, at $200 each, that's $600.
" The severe consequences of these schemes were poignantly illustrated by an American father whose 16-year-old son died by suicide in 2023 following sextortion threats. "Everything he cherished, every aspiration for college, every girl he admired, every friend he had—those were all threatened at that moment," the father recounted. "Imagine someone breaking into your home in the dead of night and shooting your son. What this person did is even worse; they instilled such fear that he took his own life. Punch report.