--:-- Georgia Howe: Welcome to Morning Wire, I'm Georgia Howe here with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for having me on the show, Georgia.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Today, we're talking about a growing sextortion epidemic driving a tragic rise in teen suicides. Joining me is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestigiacomo. Amanda, thanks for being here.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Thanks for having me, Georgia.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The FBI is warning about a continuous rise in the sexual extortion of minors online. Foreign actors specifically target teen boys in financially motivated schemes and have been linked to dozens of suicides. Amanda, can you tell us more about this issue?
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Yeah, Georgia. The FBI is warning that foreign actors, specifically from West African countries like Nigeria and Ivory Coast, and Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines, are targeting teen boys in financially motivated schemes. These schemes involve creating fake social media accounts, often posing as teenage girls, and coercing or tricking victims into sharing explicit images or footage.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's horrific. And I understand you've spoken with Representative Guffey, whose son Gavin tragically took his own life after being targeted by an online scammer. Can you tell us more about his story?
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Yeah, Georgia. Representative Guffey has become a warrior in this space since Gavin passed in 2022. He was able to get Gavin's law passed just a year after he lost Gavin. And he's currently working with fellow Republican Senator Ted Cruz on Cruz's bipartisan bill called the Take It Down Act. That would force social media companies to take down sexual images of minors within 48 hours of it being flagged.
--:-- [Representative Guffey speaks]
--:-- Representative Guffey: My son Gavin was contacted by a predator through Instagram messaging. He jumped off the video game with friends to have a chat with this female or so he thought. They began to share images and within one hour and 40 minutes, Gavin took his life. They began to demand money, giving countdowns. But even worse than that, after my son took his life, I'd never heard of what sextortion was or had a clue of what it was.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: After Gavin's death, Representative Guffey's family was contacted by the scammers for more money, and he was even taunted about Gavin committing suicide. They began to extort Gavin's 16-year-old brother, a 14-year-old cousin, and then trying to extort me as well, fully aware that Gavin had taken his life.
--:-- Representative Guffey: They sent a message to me and said did I tell you your son begged for his life. This past January, Gavin's scammer was extradited from Nigeria to the United States and was now facing life in prison.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: According to the FBI and our rescue CEO, Tammy Lee, Nigeria and other African countries are most often tied into these schemes. Often with these extortion schemes, you have money launderers within the United States that are transferring funds in order to get them overseas as well.
--:-- Tammy Lee: And then typically overseas, in Gavin's case, come out of Lagos, Nigeria, there is a well-known group called the Yahoo Boys that are doing a lot of these extortion schemes. According to Info Security magazine, the so-called Yahoo boys will inundate high schools, youth sports teams and universities with fake accounts and will use advanced social engineering tactics to coerce or trick their victims into sharing explicit images or footage.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: The group gets its name from the web service provider Yahoo, and these criminals are tied to past Nigerian print scams before they shifted to elderly fraud, fake job scams and now extortion.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's terrifying. And I understand you've also spoken with Tammy Lee about the role of artificial intelligence in these schemes.
--:-- Tammy Lee: Yeah, Georgia. Artificial intelligence is widening the net of sextortion victims. More and more of these sex predators are going online and they're becoming more sophisticated in the ways that they go after young people, minors that they're trying to exploit.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: What's brand new that we're seeing now is AI and AI is becoming a very emerging threat for sextortion where these predators can take an image of a fully clothed child and turn it into child sexual abuse material.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's just unbelievable. And I understand you've also spoken with Representative Guffey about the role of social media companies in these schemes.
--:-- Representative Guffey: I think the number one thing that we have to do is to remove Section 230 or revisit Section 230, which was written in 1996. But it gives these companies who are the richest companies since the inception of man, it absolves them from being sued. So we can sue them, but things get thrown out before discovery because they just say, well, we're not responsible for anything online because it's a public forum.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Currently, he's working with Senator Ted Cruz on the Take It Down Act. The bill would require social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook to remove any content that features explicit images or videos of minors or child sexual abuse material known as CSAM or revenge porn within 48 hours of it being flagged.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's a great point. And I understand you've also spoken with Representative Guffey about the importance of parents having conversations with their children about online safety.
--:-- Representative Guffey: I would say for parents, number one, I think often we as parents get very angry. whenever our child makes a mistake. And we need to learn grace again. We need to understand where we were at that age. And while we might not have shared pictures back and forth with one another, this is part of their generation. This is the Snapchat generation. So we can say, don't send pictures, don't share pictures. Nowadays, you don't even have to. It can be AI. But this is your reputation and it's getting spread throughout your entire community.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's a great point. And I understand you've also spoken with Tammy Lee about the importance of parents having conversations with their children about online safety.
--:-- Tammy Lee: Conversations about stranger danger really need to evolve to include online safety. We really believe that every parent has to take this to be one of the most serious threats against their children of our time because predators are everywhere. And we used to teach our kids to watch out for strangers or people in white vans. Now we have to worry about who is coming into our child's bedroom through their gaming console or through their iPhone or their iPad because these predators lurk online looking for kids that they can extort.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's a great point. And I understand you've also spoken with Representative Guffey about the importance of reporting sextortion to law enforcement.
--:-- Representative Guffey: If you or someone you know thinks they're a victim of sextortion, please call law enforcement. You can report it to the FBI by calling 1-800-CALL-FBI or visiting tips.fbi.gov.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Amanda, thanks for spreading awareness about this issue.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: You're welcome, Georgia.
