High school senior James Woods was obsessed with comics. He could quote every episode of “The Flash,” idolized the superhero Green Arrow and often sported a Naruto-inspired headband he insisted helped him run faster during track meets. All year, he looked forward to a trip his family and friends planned for the Dream Con comic book convention the following summer.
Three months into the school year, just before Thanksgiving, the 17-year-old died by suicide. His parents were shocked, grieving and also baffled. James, who lived in Streetsboro, Ohio, had not previously struggled with mental health issues, they said.
When police looked through James’ phone, they discovered he had fallen victim to financial sextortion, a crime that occurs when a predator threatens to distribute private material or harm a victim if they don’t comply with their financial demands. The scam is the fastest growing cybercrime targeting children in North America and most commonly exploits young men, particularly boys ages 13 to 17.
Sextortion has been connected to at least 30 deaths of teenage boys by suicide since 2021, according to a tally of private cases and the latest FBI numbers from cybersecurity experts.
In more than a dozen interviews, male sextortion victims and the parents of teenage boys who died by suicide described how predators established a false sense of trust before blackmailing their victims. All of the parents USA TODAY spoke with said their teens died by suicide within 24 hours of being threatened − though the window was often shorter.
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James’ predators falsely told him he would face jail time for sending nude photographs, that his parents would stop loving him and that he would never be able to run track again or go to college. In the next 19 hours, they would send James more than 200 messages, a technique predators use to instill a sense of urgency and prevent giving the victim time to think or reach out for help.
“They eliminated his desire for a future,” his mother, Tamia Woods, says. “I don’t think that James knew he was a victim.”
