**Robert Riggs**
North Texas Police Detective Brandon Poor is a big, burly man with a beard and a bald headāan 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.
**Detective Brandon Poor**
I always say I'm the ugliest 12-year-old online, we've been everything. We've been 12 and 13-year-old boys. We've been girls. I've been a mom. I've been a dad.
**Robert Riggs**
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.
**Detective Brandon Poor**
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.
**Robert Riggs**
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 Americaās critical infrastructure.
For the record, I was invited to join InfraGard after 9/11, following my investigative reports on terrorism and the Iraq War.
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 Poorās about Financially Motivated Sextortion left the deepest impression. His insights on Sextortionāa crime that preys on childrenāmade my eyes widen with concern for every child navigating the online world.
According to the FBI, the victims are typically males between the ages 14 to 17. But any child can become a victim.
Since 2021, thereās been a 323% increase in financially motivated sextortion.
**Detective Brandon Poor**
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 going to release this to your family, your friends, your school, and embarrass you. And you're they're going to 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 not knowing what to do.
**Robert Riggs**
In September 2024, the FBI arrested four 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.
These criminals extorted approximately $1.9 million from their victims using platforms like CashApp and Apple Pay. Their approach was insidious: they posed as a young female, offering teenage boys sexual photos, video recordings, and live video chats.
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 post them publicly onlineāunless the victims paid up.
This case is just one of hundreds.
**Robert Riggs**
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 preying on there? The kid, is it just huge embarrassment?
**Detective Brandon Poor**
I mean, you have to think about that. I mean, 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 you know this person, this this boy or girl, thinks that they're sending a nude picture and, and I have to say up front, 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, 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, you know, 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, these sextortion scammers are capitalizing on that. And you have to think, okay, so this, this high schooler who does not want to 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 going to call the police on you, or your family's going to, you know, you know, want to throw you in there's all sorts of types of manipulation that they're doing. And you know, 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 devastated. 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.
**Robert Riggs**
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?
**Detective Brandon Poor**
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. It's, you know, there's, there's two 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 sextortion type of things. It's just another form of control, you know? And when you 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 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 going to happen to I would say, you know, parents have this nmk, is what I call it, not my kid. It could never happen to my kid. Kind of, yes, and that's something that we have to really break that barrier, because it can happen to anyone?
**Robert Riggs**
Well, you know, I hear of parents that like they think it you can only encounter this on the dark web when actually, you know, what I heard with the FBI conference, they were talking about Snapchat was the number one target for these people.
**Detective Brandon Poor**
I mean, you think about Snapchat and Snapchat, I see most extortion happening on Snapchat and Instagram. Those are the two 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 positive that these platforms are doing, because sadly, could be any platform that predators are going to use for wrong but there are certain things that make a platform more dangerous. And to me, Snapchat is 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 one that I've seen most commonly used those two Instagram and. Snapchat.
**Robert Riggs**
So if I as a parent, discover my child is a victim of this, what should I do and where do I go?
**Detective Brandon Poor**
Okay, so we start with, don't panic. That's my first my first recommendation. My second recommendation is we see one of two things happen. Usually with dads, it's this, I'm going to kill this person, rip their head off. And you see, sort of see the, you know, spiral that the dads are going to do. The moms sometimes want to 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 kids device. I'm going to transfer it all to my device so I can wipe it from my kids device. You've now transferred sometimes illegal things onto your device. You've certainly put evidence on two we're going to 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.
**Robert Riggs**
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?
**Detective Brandon Poor**
I think education starts. 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 use this dumb analogy when I 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 going to do. You're going to show them. You're going to walk them through that step by step, and then you're going to just remind them and stay on it, and you're going to keep doing it. And, you know, at five and six, you're you're saying, Have you brushed your teeth? At nine 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 got to brush your teeth. It's the second time today. We've got to 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 development, all of these things that are uncomfortable. Maybe for us, we want to 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, you know, 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 non strangers, 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 four 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 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 dangers 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 want to 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 want to just be a preacher. I want to 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 could, 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 going to freak out. You're this is great. This is something that we've already prepared for. Sometimes kids, I think, are worried that they're going to devastate their parent, or their parents are going to just, you know, completely lose it. And you know, sometimes they have to see that, hey, we're going to hold up our end of the bargain as well. And, you know, handle it gracefully and calmly, and, you know, 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, uh, start earlier than you think. You know, I think parents sometimes want to say they ask me a lot, what age should I give my kid a phone? And I 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 cons, 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.
**Robert Riggs**
You know, as a reporter for decades at crime scenes, then later covering terrorism overseas and 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 can 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 to as a babysitter, a pacifier. It's easy. Do you think there's a naivete on the part of adults these days?
**Detective Brandon Poor**
You know? I, I want to say that they want the best for their I think every parent wants the best for their kids. I think that life can be overwhelming, and so I never want to discount the fact that parents have a tough job. I am one, you know, and and it's a 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. That 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 one time, 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, and I want to 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 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're they are on 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 want to 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 want to give them the bit. 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, that's that's gone, and you can just look up any. Thing 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.
**Robert Riggs**
Do you see any trends emerging that keep you awake at night?
**Detective Brandon Poor**
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 been. 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. And I mean, I think I'm too dumb to lose sleep sleep over it, because I don't know where it's going to 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 they, a lot of people want to go What? What is AI going to 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 have I don't think we can see right now what it's going to be in eight or 10 years. 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 eight or 10 years now down the line, I think those are things that we're going to 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 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.
**Robert Riggs**
What do you think has fueled that interest in our society, that that would be taking place?
**Detective Brandon Poor**
Oh gosh, if I, I don't want to, I don't want to 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 and 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 want to pretend to be the expert about all things. I don't know, really what I could say that could have caused it, but maybe the ease of access might be a one.
**Robert Riggs**
Detective Brandon Poor highlighted just how grave and widespread the problem of sextortion isāfar bigger than any one police department can handle.
The key to combating this threat is prevention. Education and awareness are our strongest tools.
In the show notes, youāll find a link to resources from the Catfish Cops and the FBI, where you can learn how to protect your children from the growing danger of Sextortion.
