The Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI, has announced the arrest of 22 Nigerians allegedly involved in a sextortion scheme tied to over 20 teenage suicides across the United States since 2021.

The agency, in a statement released on its official website on Thursday, said the arrests were carried out under “Operation Artemis,” described as the first-of-its-kind global initiative, which involved law enforcement agencies from Canada, Australia, Nigeria and the United Kingdom.

Launched nearly two years ago, the operation was initiated in response to thousands of reports of teenage boys being coerced into sending explicit images online, after which they were extorted with threats of exposure unless they paid money.

According to the FBI, the investigation directly connected at least one suspect to the suicide of an American teenager.

Typically, the perpetrators posed as young women online to lure minors into exchanging nude photographs. Once the images were obtained, the victims were threatened with public exposure unless they made payments. The agency added that, in many cases, even after payments were made, the threats continued and often escalated.

The FBI said: “Analysis of victims’ phones and social media accounts revealed heartbreaking narratives of young kids enduring panicked negotiations in bids to maintain their privacy.”

Data from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, IC3, indicated a surge in sextortion cases, with over 34,000 reports recorded in 2023, increasing to more than 54,000 in 2024. Financial losses from these crimes amounted to nearly 65 million dollars over the past two years.

Between October 2021 and March 2023, US authorities and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, NCMEC, recorded more than 12,600 minors targeted by sextortionists. The number of financial sextortion cases soared from 10,731 in 2022 to 26,718 in 2023.

Similarly, Australia has witnessed a rising trend, with its Federal Police recording about 300 new sextortion cases monthly.

Speaking on the development, FBI Special Agent Matthew Crowley, who interviewed some of the suspects in Nigeria, disclosed that the offenders explained why they preferred sextortion scams to others like romance fraud or business email compromise.

One subject said, “It is easy money. I can just move on to the next one if I do not get any traction,” Crowley stated.

She added, “It makes sense why they would go that route because they could target 40 victims in a day, working multiple at a time. And maybe of those 40, three pay. But if three paid 200 dollars, that is 600 dollars.”

The tragic impact of the sextortion scheme was underscored by the emotional account of a father whose 16-year-old son took his own life after being victimised.

He said, “Everything that he loved, every college ambition he had, every girl he liked, every friend he had, those things were all threatened right then.

“Imagine somebody walking into your home in the middle of the night and shooting your son. Well, this person did something even worse than that. He scared him so bad that he shot himself.”