Incidents of sextortion have been prosecuted under various criminal statutes, including as
extortion,
breach of trust,
corruption, sexual
coercion,
sexual exploitation,
child pornography, and
computer hacking and
wiretapping. •
Anthony Stancl of
Wisconsin, then 18, received 15 years in prison in February 2010 after he posed as a girl on
Facebook to trick male high school classmates into sending him nude cell phone photos, which he then used to extort them for
homosexual sex. •
Isaac Baichu, a federal immigration officer in New York, was sentenced to to years in prison in July 2010 after demanding sex from a 22-year-old Colombian woman in exchange for a green card. • In May 2010, the police of the
Basque Country in
Spain arrested a 24-year-old man accused of blackmailing a woman he met on an online chatroom and threatening to distribute nude photographs of her from her webcam. • A video of the former
Chinese Communist Party official
Lei Zhengfu having sex with a woman was a part of a sextortion plot by a criminal gang.He was dismissed from his position as
Chinese Communist Party Committee Secretary of
Beibei, Chongqing and detained by the police a few days after. Additionally, the Party expelled him in early May. Subsequently, he was given a 13-year prison sentence for bribery. •
Aydin Coban was jailed for 6 years for the
suicide of Amanda Todd. • In 2013, Daniel Perry committed
suicide hours after falling victim to webcam blackmail. •
Anton Martynenko was sentenced to 38 years in a federal prison, after victimizing over 155 teenage boys by making around 50 fake accounts on Facebook, often those of young women, to convince the victims to send him nude photos. The accounts were also used to spread the explicit photos and videos of the victims to their high school classmates, with one boy's photos being sold on the
dark web. In addition, three boys were blackmailed into meeting up with Martynenko and performing sex acts with him; two of the victims later committed suicide. Martynenko is considered the largest producer of child pornography in Minnesota history. •
Jared Abrahams was sentenced to 18 months in jail after using Google Dorking to commit sextortion crimes against Miss Teen USA
Cassidy Wolf along with around 150 other women. • Between 2009 and 2017,
Matthew Falder, a researcher at the
University of Birmingham, blackmailed his victims online into performing acts of "rape, murder, sadism, torture, paedophilia, blackmail, humiliation and degradation", threatening to reveal pictures of them (which he usually obtained earlier by obtaining a false trust with the victim) if they did not comply with his commands. He used various accounts on several websites to pose as a young girl or woman named "Liz" and lured people into taking photographs of themselves in humiliating situations. Falder often increased the pressure on his victims, at least four of whom attempted suicide. When one of his victims pleaded for the abuse to end lest they kill themselves, Falder replied that the images he already had on them would be circulated on the Internet anyway. Falder's victims numbered over 50, and it took over 30 minutes to read out the charges to him at
Birmingham Crown Court. Originally charged with 188 offences, he pleaded not guilty to 51 of them; the prosecution accepted this, but they were ordered to
remain on file. • In November 2022, Florida businessman
Kent Stermon engaged in a sextortion scheme, offering a young family friend backstage access to
Taylor Swift in exchange for nude photos. On November 18, 2022, the victim went to Stermon's office, where he detained her and demanded favors. On November 29, 2022, Stermon met with the victim and her father at Panera. Following a confrontation, Stermon fled, and police were informed. On December 8, 2022, Stermon died by suicide. He shot himself in his truck at the Atlantic Beach post office.
Samuel Ogoshi, 22,
Samson Ogoshi, 20, and
Ezekiel Ejehem Robert, 19, who are residents of
Lagos, Nigeria reportedly targeted hundreds of teenagers and adults in the United States posing as young women whose accounts had been hacked on
Instagram. The three men would reportedly ask for nude pictures and then threaten to release the photos unless the victim paid them money. One victim, Jordan DeMay, 17, of
Michigan, committed suicide after they threatened to release a nude photo of him if he failed to pay them $1,000 US, prompting the United States to file the proper motions to
extradite them. Their cases are pending and they face over thirty years in prison if convicted. It was reported in August 2023 that Samuel and Samson Ogoshi, brothers, had been extradited to the United States and had gone before a federal judge in
Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Ogoshi brothers pled guilty to sexually extorting teenage boys and young men in April 2024, and were sentenced to 17.5 years in prison in September 2024. U.S. attorney for the
Western District of Michigan Mark Totten stated: “[The] guilty pleas represent an extraordinary success in the prosecution of international sextortion. These convictions will send a message to criminals in
Nigeria and every corner of the globe: working with our partners both here and overseas, we can find you and we can bring you to justice.” •
Rubén Oswaldo Yeverino Rosales was sentenced to 34 years for extorting over 100 victims. • In 2025, police in
Stony Point, New York arrested a Fieldstone Middle School student who they said had targeted at least six victims but "potentially several hundred". The male student, who was not named due to his age, had allegedly posed as a female online and obtained nude pictures of other boys, which he then used to extort them into sending him gift cards or additional pictures. == See also ==