North Texas police detective Brandon Poor
is a big, burly man with a beard
and a bald head,
an imposing figure with an even more daunting
task.
He poses as teenage boys and girls on
social media platforms like
Snapchat and Instagram,
as well as in online gaming communities to
catch online predators.
I always say I'm the ugliest 12 year
old online.
We've been everything. We've been 12 13 year
old boys. We've been girls. I've been a
mom. I've been a dad.
Along with his partner, they call themselves
the Catfish
Cops.
Their mission, to reel in predators through carefully
crafted decoy profiles,
exposing the perpetrators of a rapidly growing and
devastating
crime wave known as
sextortion.
So sextortion
is a word that we use when we
talk about what happens is the predator,
sometimes posing as someone else,
gets a nude image or video of the
child, And then they use that to blackmail
the child for some objective.
I first met detective Brandon Poor at an
InfraGard
conference on emerging cyber threats.
InfraGard is a partnership between the FBI and
the private sector to safeguard America's
critical infrastructure.
And for the record, I was invited to
join InfraGard after 911
following my investigative
reports on terrorism and the war in Iraq.
Like all members, I underwent a security background
check, which I was familiar with from receiving
a top secret security clearance
as a congressional investigator before becoming a journalist.
Of all the presentations
that day,
detective Poor's about financially
motivated sextortion
left the deepest impression.
His insights on sextortion,
a crime that preys on children,
made my eyes widen with concern for every
child navigating the online world.
According to the FBI, the victims are typically
males between ages 14 to 17,
but any child can become a victim.
Since 2021,
there's been a
323%
increase
in financially motivated sextortion.
And what that looks like is these organized
crime groups
in other countries, a lot of times, Nigeria,
the Ivory Coast, Philippines, but there are some
US based as well. And what they do
is they will pose
as maybe a female, 16 year old. They
will contact,
maybe a 14, 15, 16 year old boy,
and they will say, let's trade a nude
picture.
And they will have a nude picture that
they send to the boy, and then the
boy sends something, and then they strike. And
the strike is,
you if you don't
send me some sort of financial,
whatever it is, if it's, you know, a
gift card or some sort of game reward
or if it's Cash App or Venmo or
something like that, if you don't send me
money,
then I'm gonna release this to your family,
your friends, your school, and embarrass you, and
you're they're gonna see
and all of this stuff about you. And
so we've seen kids panic. They try and
handle it themselves. They're embarrassed. They're scared. They
don't want it released. And then we've seen,
you know, just the worst of the worst
is we've seen kids
commit suicide just from the shame of it
and and not knowing what to do.
In 2024,
the FBI arrested 4 Delaware men on federal
charges in connection with an alleged
international
sextortion
scheme.
It preyed on thousands of victims across the
United States,
Canada, and the United Kingdom.
According to the FBI, the conspirators extorted approximately
$1,900,000
from their victims
using platforms like Cash App and Apple Pay.
Their approach was insidious.
They posed as a young female, offering teenage
boys
sexual photos, video recordings, and live chats on
video.
Once the victims were lured into exposing their
genitals
and engaging in sexual activity,
the conspirators
secretly recorded the interactions.
They then used these recordings as extortion,
threatening to send the victims compromising images to
their family members and friends or to post
them publicly online
unless the victims paid up.
This case is just one of 100.
Well, I've been hearing about high school students,
17 year olds,
who are emptying out their bank accounts from
their summer jobs.
Yeah.
And they're afraid they don't confide anything to
their parents until the parents notice the bank
accounts are empty. Yeah. What are they praying
on there?
The kid is it just a huge embarrassment?
Think about when you were in school. You
know,
embarrassment is
a motivator. Right? You know? That's what bullying
is. It can be embarrassment and look what
you've got or look how you look or
whatever it is. And think about this. You
know, something that may be the most personal
or secretive thing, and this boy or girl
thinks that they're sending
a nude picture. And I have to say
upfront,
a lot of parents just don't believe that
that's happening. Well, when you look at the
statistics out there, the number of kids who
are sending nude content to other kids and
to people they think are adults is astounding.
It's so
commonplace.
It's so ubiquitous that that it's almost like
you know, even if you if you ask
kids sometimes we've asked high school kids when
we've taught places, like, do you know about
sending nudes? And they're like, yeah. I would
never send it, but I know people who
have. And so it's common. It's something that's
happening. And so
these sex torsion scammers are capitalizing on that.
And you have to think, okay. So this
high schooler
who does not wanna be embarrassed has now
sent
a picture or a video of their genitals
or of them masturbating or something that it
would be
horrifying if it got out to their school,
and it would be an embarrassment. And so
now that's being used. And maybe it's the
threat of it going to their parents. Maybe
it's the threat of it going to their
school or their church or some other thing.
We've also seen one of the tactics that
they're doing is they will
even if nothing nude was sent, they will
take pictures and then
take a nude image they've gotten somewhere else
and say it's that kid and then start
saying horrible things about what this person has
done
and, you know, threatening that we're gonna call
the police on you or your family's gonna,
you know, wanna throw you a jab. There's
all sorts of types of manipulation that they're
doing. And if as adults, we fall for
those things, if as adults, we are ashamed
and embarrassed by the things you know, I
know adults that have fallen for scams, and
they're just
they're just Mhmm. Devastated. And they can't believe
they fell for it. Right? You know? And
if adults are doing that, how much more
are we believing that our kids are?
And if they're trying to handle it themselves
and not wanting anyone to know, you can
see very quickly how it becomes a spiral
of of sort of hopelessness.
Well, I've heard talk that there's a new
twist on some of this, that they're asking
the kids to carve initials
on their body or attack someone and film
it. Have you seen any of that? Is
that a new thing?
The attacking someone, I think I've seen that
sort of in the news. I haven't worked
any of those cases directly.
The carving initials,
yes, we've seen that. There's 2 types of
cases where I've seen that, where we've seen
a child predator who has established a relationship
with this
minor,
and they are sort of establishing domination over
that kid by getting them to, you know,
carve in initials.
Of course, there are the the sextortion type
of things.
It's just another form of control. Everyone knows
the word trafficking. Right? And that's the term
that you're hearing around there. And trafficking certainly
is just as heinous and evil and and
something that exists
right around us. But
I don't think most parents think that, you
know, that this sort of thing actually happens
far more frequently
than even the trafficking stuff. And it's happening
to kids
that are not high risk. They're not, you
know, they come from good families. They have
parents who, you know, are invested in their
life, and they have a lot to lose,
so to speak. So it's one of those
things where, you know, it's not just gonna
happen to I would say parents have this,
NMK is what I call it, not my
kid. It could never happen to my kid
kinda thing. And that's something that we have
to really break that barrier because it can
happen to anyone.
Well, you know, and I hear of parents
that like, they think it you can only
encounter this on the dark web Yeah. When
actually,
you know, what I heard with the FBI
conference, they were talking about Snapchat was the
number one target for these people. I mean,
you think about Snapchat.
And Snapchat, I see most extortion happening on
Snapchat and Instagram. Those are the 2 that
are most commonly seen by me,
personally.
But you have to think about it.
Think about Snapchat and what it's designed for.
It was designed for photos and videos to
delete. Right? And then we add in a
whole bunch of other features, like a map
that will locate you down to several meters
away. It's got an encrypted vault contained within
it. It's got the ability to connect to
people who are not within your direct sphere,
who may be a stranger to you that
you can connect directly with them. And then
you think about Instagram, and a lot of
those features have now are now added to
Instagram. Now
I will be fair and say that Instagram,
at least in the news lately, has been
saying that they're making it a lot more
child friendly. So I don't ever want to
discount the the positive that these platforms are
doing,
because,
sadly, it could be any platform that predators
are gonna use for wrong. But there are
certain things that make a platform more dangerous.
And to me, Snapchat's one of the ones
that I just don't I don't see any
reason or way that you can make it
safer
when those things are the, you know, the
design of it. Not to say that there's
not some sort of positive out there, but
it's the the one that I've seen most
commonly used, those 2, Instagram and Snapchat.
So if I, as a parent, discover my
child is a victim of this,
what should I do?
And where do I go? Okay. So we
start with don't panic. That's my first my
first recommendation. My second recommendation is we see
1 of 2 things happen. Usually, with dads,
it's this, I'm gonna kill this person, rip
their head off, and you see sort of
see the, you know, spiral that the dads
are gonna do. The moms sometimes wanna make
a case for the police, so they go
on and pretending to be the kid. Neither
are helpful. Neither are good.
Don't initiate communication with the predator.
Don't
pretend to be your child and and talk
as them. Another big thing we see happen
is a lot of parents will say, well,
I don't want this on my kid's device.
I'm gonna transfer it all to my device
so I can wipe it from my kid's
device.
You've now
transferred sometimes illegal
things onto your device. You've certainly put evidence
on 2. We're gonna have to take both
devices. So don't do that.
Stop.
Contact your local law enforcement.
And just know we've got a ton of
resources out there. There are great organizations
out there working in this field to protect
kids.
We've tried to do with the Catfish Cops
idea. What we've tried to do with our
website
is not reinvent the wheel. We have partnered
with some great organizations that have resources of
their own. We link to those resources.
We happen to work with another great organization
called Prevention Starts With Parents to create a
sextortion guide, a prevention guide, and a response
guide. So those resources are there, but there
are a whole bunch of websites that we
directly link to from our website, or I
can give them out because it's not about
self promotion. It's literally about there are amazing
resources out there. And as soon as you
can educate yourself on it, what we try
to do with our sextortion guides is just
what is sextortion?
101.
The prevention guide is, what does it look
like? How can I prevent it? What are
some conversations that I can have with my
child now
so that maybe we can stop this from
happening in the future?
The other side of that is we have
a response guide. What if something's happened? And
so
specifically to your question,
if something's already happened,
stop. We have a guide that will walk
you right through. What do I do? What's
the next step? What will this look like?
What are some common things to expect? But
even if you don't go to our guides,
contact your local law enforcement,
report the abuse on the platform, and then
contact the police. They'll walk you through what
to do next.
Well, you talked about at the beginning
that this is so widespread online that you
don't have the resources to make cases and
arrest everyone.
Right. What should we do for prevention and
educating our young people? I think education is
sort of, you know, we think about it
as being this
lofty goal of, you know, what what should
we use it for? And, I mean, we
do it all the time. Right? And I
I use this dumb analogy when I teach
to community organizations or to
parents. When you start teaching your child how
to brush their teeth, you know, as soon
as they get teeth, you walk them through.
You may show them how to brush their
teeth. You may sing a little dumb song
to remind them what you're gonna do. You
you're gonna show them. You're gonna walk them
through that step by step.
And then you're gonna just remind them and
stay on it, and you're gonna keep doing
it. And, you know, at 5 and 6,
you're you're saying, have you brushed your teeth?
At 9 and 10, you're going, hey. Have
you gone and brushed your teeth? It's twice
a day. You know, I jokingly say, my
13 year old, I have to say,
you gotta brush your teeth. It's the second
time today. We've gotta do it. Go brush
your teeth. We do that from the time
they're little, but we want education about tough
things like this or body safety or sexual
develop. All of these things that are uncomfortable
maybe for us, we wanna have, like, a
time that we do education. And I think
that that's sort of setting it up for
failure. Because if you're waiting until a point
to educate or try to prevent,
you're probably behind the curve.
So my recommendation is start very early. The
minute you start talking about
crossing the street and safety things, you should
be talking about body safety. You should be
talking about good touch, bad touch, stranger
danger, comfort with nonstrangers
because most child abuse is happening by someone
known to the family, known to the child,
usually a relative or a close family acquaintance.
So it shouldn't just be stranger danger because
strangers might not be the danger. It may
be someone they know. But those kind of
things can happen young and early. It should
be age appropriate. You shouldn't be talking about
things that you would talk to a 12
year old about with a 4 year old,
but you can make age appropriate talk with
those different ages of kids. And there are
a whole bunch of resources
that I can give you or or kind
of recommend that you can go look those
things up or go online and learn about
them. But when it comes to
these type of things, online, dangerous, certainly start
having the conversation
way early. Talk about, you know, what you
expect.
Talk about, hey, online, you know, these are
people that we can't trust online and the
things we need to watch for. I always
say we wanna empower a child from the
start to be so
confident and so prepared
that when that predator approaches, it's not even
a thought. You know, I've
I've preached this stuff to my kids as
well. You know, I don't wanna just be
a preacher. I wanna practice what I preach.
And so I've talked to my kids, and
they've actually had instances where someone that they
shouldn't have been able to contact them was
able to. And they stopped right away, brought
it into me, and said, dad, I need
you to see this. This is what just
happened. And I had to show them, like,
hey. This is exactly what we've talked about.
I'm not gonna freak out. This is something
that we've already prepared for. Sometimes kids, I
think, are worried that they're gonna devastate their
parent or their parents are gonna just, you
know, completely lose it. And, you know, sometimes
they have to see that, hey. We're gonna
hold up our end of the bargain as
well and,
you know,
handle it gracefully and calmly
and sort of be the parent that we
are in that case. And so I think
it's it's about talking. It's about discussion. It's
we we use the word just be intentional.
Just be invested in their lives and talking
and communicating.
Start earlier than you think. You know, I
think parents sometimes wanna say they ask me
a lot.
What age should I give my kid a
phone? And I have to say, well, I
think that's dependent on your child to some
extent and your circumstances.
I think 10 is a good age to
start thinking about it. I don't think under
10 necessarily
unless you can sort of limit it. But
I certainly see that there are times and
contexts at which maybe a child under 10
does need a device because of what's going
on in their lives with their family.
And if that's the case, then you should
be so
invested that
there's never a question about whether a predator
can get to them because you've locked down
the device and you've prepared that kid. You've
given them confidence to know that if something
happens, you're their safe person to go back
to and and talk about it. You know,
as a reporter for decades
at crime scenes, then later covering terrorism overseas
in war zones,
You know, the things you see. And I
always used to say, be careful of what
you see. Once you put it in your
head, you can't get rid of it. Yeah.
But now kids,
through a phone screen, have a window on
the worst of humanity, the worst of stuff.
And I kind of cringe when I see
parents hand their little ones
the phone at
dinner as a babysitter or pacifier.
It's easy. Right? Do you think there's a
naivete
on the part of adults these days? I
wanna say that
I think every parent wants the best for
their kids. I think that life can be
overwhelming, and so I never wanna discount
the fact that parents have a tough job.
I am one. It's a
demanding job,
but I know most parents want the good
for their kids. And so I think sometimes,
yeah, they don't think about or they don't
even know what's out there. The number of
times I've talked to a parent and they're
like, I had no idea this was going
on, or I had no idea this could
happen.
And so
the problem with that though is, you know,
because I also get that sort of once
in a while, I'll get that parent that
says,
I just don't know the tech that they're
on, and so I don't know how to
fix this. And I wanna say, you know,
that's laziness because you do know the tech.
They're they're on the phone that you're using.
You know, I always think it's funny when
parents tell me I don't know the tech.
When I'm about to present when I watch
them for the 10 minutes before the presentation,
sitting on their phone, texting and sending emails
and doing all the things they're doing on
social media.
And so that's laziness because they are on
the the same apps that the predators are
contacting the kids. They're on the social media
apps. They're on the web apps, the game
apps, all of those things.
I think it's just that you don't wanna
believe something terrible could happen.
And so they're they're sort
of putting their head under the sand because
it's easier, and it's less terrifying. So I
wanna give them the you know, the Internet
is a great thing. You can have at
your fingertips things that we growing up could
have never imagined having at our fingertips. Right?
You know, I I remember having the Encyclopedia
Britannica at my house and having to look
up stuff then. And Yes. You know? Yeah.
That's
that's gone. And you can just look up
anything at the touch of a fingertip.
But with that comes, you know, the danger
of, hey. You've got this at your fingertips.
And guess what? The person across the world
has access to your kid. So I think
there are certainly things that you put in
place that protect your child
on their app, but don't or on their
device, don't let that become a babysitter. Don't
let the device become a babysitter, and then
don't put some sort of parental monitoring thing
on that you depend on to be the
babysitter for all of those dangers because that's
when we see parents sort of lose track
of what their kid is doing online.
Do you see any trends emerging that keep
you awake at night?
You know, when you've seen I we jokingly
say we've been to the end of the
internet, and it is a terrifying spot. I've
been on the dark web and see
the horribleness there.
I've seen the things that people do, even
on the apps that you just use every
day.
I think right now, the biggest trend as
far as what I get asked about the
most is AI.
I think I'm too dumb to lose sleep
over it because I don't know where it's
gonna go, but that should be terrifying a
bit because
it's sort of evolved quicker than we know
what it's going to be used for. So
that's the thing that I tell people when
they ask me about artificial intelligence and AI.
A lot of people wanna go, what what
is AI gonna do for child exploitation and
online Internet danger?
And I have to say sort of, honestly,
I don't know. I don't think we're there
yet, and I don't think we can see
right now what it's gonna be in 8
or 10 years. I I mean, you think
about it. A lot of the apps that
we're using now very commonly and very popularly
weren't around
10 years ago or 12 years ago. We
didn't have these apps. And so to think
8 or 10 years now down the line,
I think those are things that we're gonna
be surprised to see. I think that that
we may, you know, run into some things
that we weren't prepared for, but I don't
think it's something that we can't
handle. I think it's something that, you know,
if you are smart about how you approach
handling it now,
you can prepare for it in the future.
I think that's right now, the sextortion trend,
the spike in sextortion is is pretty alarming.
I think the AI trend is pretty alarming.
And I just don't think people realize
how commonly
people are looking up
what we call child sexual abuse material.
It was historically called child pornography, but we're
seeing reports of that.
Just the numbers are staggering
at the at the reports of people who
are uploading and and viewing that kind of
content. What do you think has fueled that
interest in our society that that would be
taking place?
Oh, gosh. If I I don't wanna I
don't wanna get into the psychology of it.
I I think that the ease of which
I mean, you think of the ease of
which people can see anything.
Pornography
in in general is just
everywhere, right, online,
as is everything. Everything is just at the
touch of a button. And so I think
that's sort of become
maybe why we see those numbers going up
is just the ease of which they have
access to it. And then, you know, sometimes
the
unpoliced
places that have allowed it to fester, maybe.
But we're seeing those things, you know, approached.
I know we've seen
arrests happen that
platform
developers happen and, you know, that we didn't
expect. And so,
you know, I I don't I don't wanna
pretend to be the expert about all things.
I I don't know
really what I could say that could have
caused it, but maybe the ease of access
might be a one.
Detective Poor highlighted just how grave and widespread
the problem of financially motivated sextortion is.
Far bigger than any one police department can
handle.
He says the key to combating this threat
is prevention.
Education and awareness
are our strongest tools.
In the show notes, you will find a
link to resources from the Catfish Cops and
the FBI,
where you can learn more about how to
protect your children
from the growing danger
of sex
sextortion.