The Capitol in Salt Lake City is pictured on Monday, May 6, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
In Oct. 2015, Cindy George’s son, Jake, started talking to a woman he met online. She seemed interested in Jake, and asked him for a sexually explicit photo. She would send one in return, she told him.
Jake complied. And almost immediately, the woman — who was actually a scammer based in the Philippines — responded, “Now we’ve got you.”
“You’re going to pay us, or we’re going to ruin your life with this picture. We’re going to send it to your family and friends and put them in a panic,” George recalled.
Jake started talking to the person on a Sunday. On Friday, just five days later, he died by suicide at his parents’ property in Millard County.
George spoke to the Utah Legislature’s Organized Crime Subcommittee on Thursday during a tearful testimony for both her and lawmakers, where she described the “evil” tactics that ultimately drove her son to end his life.
Defined by the FBI as coercing someone to share explicit images of themselves, then using the image to blackmail them, sextortion is on the rise. In the last five years, instances of extortion and blackmail have dramatically increased in the Beehive State — according to data from the Utah Department of Public Safety, there were 152 cases in 2019.
FBI reports ‘significant increase’ in sextortion across Mountain West
Since then, the state has seen an increase of about 140 extortion and blackmail cases each year, on average. The state reported 270 in 2020, 346 in 2021, 512 in 2022, and 714 in 2023 — a record high.
Data for 2024 is still preliminary, but it’s possible Utah could see another record year, with 346 cases of extortion or blackmail as of August.
The problem is so pervasive, especially in the Mountain West, that earlier this year the FBI field office that covers Utah, Montana and Idaho put out a warning to parents and teens after it started receiving dozens of reports of sextortion each month.
Often the predators pretend to be young girls online who convince the victim, mostly young men or teenage boys, to send them sexually explicit images, the FBI says. Once they comply, the predator will threaten to share the picture with the victim’s family, school or work, unless they send them money.
That’s what happened to Jake. As soon as he sent the scammer a photograph, they threatened to share it publicly. “They were on him,” his mother said Thursday.
They told him to get in his car, and drive somewhere to wire them money. They texted him through his entire drive — “Are you there yet? Are you there yet? We’re going to send that picture. You better hurry. Send us a picture of that money.”
Jake sent $300 to a woman in the Philippines, then asked them to delete the picture. But the scammers wanted more.
“You’re going to be our personal genie,” they said in response, demanding two more payments. Jake wired more money, but they kept pressuring him. He sent them a screenshot of his bank account, now drained. They wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“He realized it was never going to end,” George said.
It only took a handful of days for Jake to lose hope. “You won’t get any money from me if I’m not here,” he told the woman in the Philippines. She taunted him.
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“Oh, are you going to kill yourself, like five other guys did? Go ahead, do it…if you don’t have any money, you better be thinking of a way you can take your life,” they said, according to George.
Jake made his last payment on a Wednesday; on Thursday, he bought tools from Home Depot to take his life; on Friday, he was gone.
“I know this is sudden. The hell I went through from Sunday to Thursday was too much for me to handle,” reads a letter Jake left for his mother.
‘All I can do is warn people. You guys have the power’
Under Utah law, sexual extortion is already a felony if the perpetrator is an adult, defined as the act of forcing someone to engage in sexual conduct or to produce or distribute “any image, video, or other recording of any individual naked or engaged in sexually explicit conduct,” with the intent to obtain something of value.
Lawmakers could be looking to strengthen that law this upcoming session, although no bill files have been opened yet. Rep. Ryan Wilcox, R-Ogden, said he wanted George to come back and talk to the larger Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee, telling her “there’s more that we can do.”
That could include increasing awareness in the public schools so that kids know not to fall victim to a similar scheme. It could also mean bolstering resources for investigators, or changing the way sextortion is prosecuted.
“All I can do is warn people. You guys have the power to do something to get the information into our schools. We’ve got to warn these kids,” George told lawmakers.
Public education, George said, is key.
“They need to know that the mistake of sending a picture is not worth taking your life over — that they can recover from it. It may be embarrassing, but they certainly don’t need to take their life over a picture,” she told the committee.
In 2023, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed “Gavin’s Law,” named after the son of state Rep. Brandon Guffey’s son, who died by suicide after being targeted in a sextortion scheme. The law makes sexual extortion a felony, defined as blackmailing someone using sexually explicit photos or videos. If the victim suffers injury or death directly related to the crime, it becomes an aggravated felony, which carries up to 20 years in prison.
Wilcox on Thursday said he would reach out to Guffrey as he continues to work on the issue.
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