A 17-year-old boy died by suicide hours after being scammed. The FBI says it’s part of a troubling increase in ‘sextortion’ cases.

Inside hours, the 17-year-old, straight-A student and Boy Scout had died by suicide.

"Somebody reached out to him pretending to be a woman, they usually began a dialog," his mother, Pauline Stuart, advised CNN, preventing again tears as she described what occurred to her son days after she and Ryan had completed visiting a number of schools he was contemplating attending after graduating high school.

The online conversation quickly grew intimate, and then turned felony.

The scammer -- posing as a younger girl -- despatched Ryan a nude picture and then asked Ryan to share an specific picture of himself in return. Instantly after Ryan shared an intimate photograph of his personal, the cybercriminal demanded $5,000, threatening to make the photo public and ship it to Ryan's household and friends.

The San Jose, California, teen advised the cybercriminal he could not pay the complete amount, and the demand was ultimately lowered to a fraction of the original determine -- $150. But after paying the scammers from his faculty savings, Stuart mentioned, "They stored demanding increasingly more and placing a number of continued pressure on him."

On the time, Stuart knew none of what her son was experiencing. She discovered the small print after law enforcement investigators reconstructed the events main as much as his dying.

She had mentioned goodnight to Ryan at 10 p.m., and described him as her usually glad son. By 2 a.m., he had been scammed, and taken his life. Ryan left behind a suicide observe describing how embarrassed he was for himself and the family.

"He really, truly thought in that point that there wasn't a option to get by if these footage have been really posted online," Pauline said. "His notice showed he was absolutely terrified. No youngster should have to be that scared."

Legislation enforcement calls the scam "sextortion," and investigators have seen an explosion in complaints from victims leading the FBI to ramp up a campaign to warn mother and father from coast to coast.

The bureau says there were over 18,000 sextortion-related complaints in 2021, with losses in excess of $13 million. The FBI says the use of little one pornography by criminals to lure suspects also constitutes a critical crime.

The investigation into Final's case is ongoing, Stuart and the FBI inform CNN.

"To be a legal that specifically targets kids -- it is one of the more deeper violations of trust I think in society," says FBI Supervisory Particular Agent Dan Costin, who leads a team of investigators working to counter crimes in opposition to children.

According to Costin, many of the sextortion scams reported to the FBI are decided to be from criminals on the African continent and in Southeast Asia. Federal investigators are working with their regulation enforcement counterparts around the world, Costin said, to assist determine and arrest perpetrators who're targeting children on-line.

One problem for the FBI: many victims of sextortion do not report the incidents to regulation enforcement.

"The embarrassment piece of that is in all probability one of the larger hurdles that the victims have to overcome," said Costin. "It may be quite a bit, especially in that second."

But investigators urge victims to shortly contact regulation enforcement, either online or at their native FBI subject office.

Medical specialists say there is a key cause why young males are particularly vulnerable to sextortion-related scams.

"Teen brains are still creating," mentioned Dr. Scott Hadland, chief of adolescent medicine at Mass Basic in Boston. "So when something catastrophic happens, like a private picture is released to individuals on-line, it is onerous for them to look past that second and perceive that in the massive scheme of issues they'll be capable to get by way of this."

Hadland said there are steps dad and mom can take to help safeguard their children from online hurt.

"An important thing that a mum or dad should do with their teen is try to understand what they're doing on-line," she mentioned. "You want to know after they're going surfing, who they're interacting with, what platforms they're utilizing. Are they being approached by people who they do not know, are they experiencing stress to share info or photographs?"

Hadland stated it is also vital that parents particularly warn teens of scams like sextortion, with out shaming them.

"You want to make it clear that they can talk to you if they have finished something, or they really feel like they've made a mistake," he mentioned.

Ryan's mother agrees.

"It is advisable to discuss to your children because we need to make them aware of it," Stuart mentioned.

Still grieving the lack of her son, she is channeling her family's pain into motion, and honoring Ryan by talking out and telling his story. She hopes that doing so will help save lives.

"How might these people take a look at themselves in the mirror realizing that $150 is more essential than a baby's life?" she says. "There is not any other word however 'evil' for me that they care way more about cash than a child's life. I do not want anyone else to go through what we did."