Read the Story
Robert Riggs
In my last episode, I warned about the online blood cult called 764, whose members have coerced teenage girls into self-harm, including attempted suicide.
764’s members collected images and video of girls mutilating themselves. It’s a status symbol called “blood content,” which they swapped among themselves like sports trading cards.
In this episode, I reveal another type of sinister threat inside popular video gaming platforms in which boys are blackmailed.
It’s a sextortion scheme that starts with a benign gift.
Not one delivered by Amazon to your front door.
These gifts arrive inside an online game,
It may be a new skin, a rare weapon, or a few credits that help a young player level up.
To a parent, it may look like pixels changing hands.
To a child, it can feel like generosity. Recognition. The moment a more experienced player says: I see you. You belong here.
For a child, an online game can be a contest, a creative workshop and a neighborhood all at once.
It’s where friends meet after school. Where a shy kid finds a team. Where players build worlds, trade advice, argue strategy and laugh through headsets in rooms their parents may never enter.
Most of the time, that is exactly what it appears to be: play, friendship and belonging.
But the same features that build trust can be used to test it.
A stranger becomes a teammate.
The teammate becomes a trusted confidant.
Then comes the first stage of the ploy: an invitation to talk in a private online space.
The conversation moves to personal questions about sex.
The teenage boy believes he is talking to an attractive girl.
The objective is to learn personal details about the teen’s life. Make him think a beautiful woman likes him.
Instead, it may be a man grooming the teen to lower his guard.
The predator’s ultimate objective is to persuade the teen to share compromising sexual photos.
It’s blackmail material.
Once shared, the predator springs his trap. A demand for money or a video of the teen following instructions to abuse someone, or else.
The photos will go public. Teenage boys by the hundreds have emptied out their bank accounts to appease these predators.
The danger is not that games magically ensnare teens into this web of sexual deception.
And it is not that every online friend is a predator.
The truth is that gaming has become a vast social environment, and adults cannot effectively protect children inside an environment they do not understand.
The FBI warns that sextortion can begin on any site, app, messaging platform, or game where people meet and communicate.
So the question is not whether online gaming is good or bad.
It is whether the adults responsible for a child understand how play, chat, identity, money, and apps connect.
And whether that child knows what to do when a friendly interaction takes an unexpected turn.
The title on the gaming platform screen still matters. So does the age rating. But the deeper safety questions are social.
Who can contact the child?
Can players speak by voice or text?
Can they exchange gifts?
Can they create private rooms?
What does the profile reveal?
Can a stranger send a link?
Can the conversation jump to a direct-message account or another service with different rules?
You are not evaluating one game.
You are evaluating a network of people, features, devices, and incentives.
That network can do real good as well as harm.
Gaming may foster teamwork, confidence, creativity, and a sense of belonging in a child.
For a child who feels isolated offline, that sense of belonging may be especially powerful.
Belonging is not the problem. It is one of gaming’s strengths.
The risk appears when someone weaponizes it—especially against a child who wants to advance, fears losing a valued group, or believes a generous player has become a trusted friend.
Predators do not need to invent a child’s desire to belong. They only need to notice it.
A gift inside a game is not automatically suspicious. Context is what matters.
Is the giver a cousin, a classmate, or an adult no one knows? Is the gift occasional, or does it create a sense of debt?
Does the person ask for secrecy, personal information, photographs or a move to another app?
Do they become angry when the child sets a boundary?
One act may be innocent. A sequence can tell a different story.
The Federal Trade Commission warns parents to be alert when an unknown player asks a child to chat on another platform.
The suggested response is simple: decline, keep the conversation in-game, and tell a trusted adult.
That advice sounds almost too basic for a sophisticated technological threat. It is not.
Safety isn't just a setting buried in a menu.
It is a response practiced before the moment a child needs it.
Children should know they will not be punished for bringing an uncomfortable interaction to an adult, even if they clicked, replied, broke a household rule, or sent something they regret.
That assurance matters because fear and shame are not side effects of exploitation. They are part of the offender’s strategy.
The child may believe the first disclosure will cost them their phone, their game, and their parents’ punishment.
The predator wants that child to believe silence is safer than asking for help.
Parents have to break that calculation in advance.
No single phrase proves grooming. Look for a progression.
An unknown person singles out the child. They offer attention, status, gifts, or help.
They ask increasingly personal questions.
They test whether the child will keep a secret.
They try to isolate the conversation.
Then they introduce sexual material, threats, or demands.
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, known as NCMEC, defines online enticement as communication with someone believed to be a child with the intent to commit a sexual offense or abduction.
The NCMEC says it occurs across social media, messaging apps, and gaming platforms.
The risk can also be collective.
In a two thousand twenty-three public warning, the FBI’s San Francisco office described what it called “group grooming.”
FBI agents uncovered adults posing as children in social media groups and gaming clans.
The adults reinforced one another, making the exchange of explicit material appear normal to a child who believed the group was made up of peers.
That changes the pressure. The child is not resisting one persuasive stranger. The child may believe an entire group of friends accepts the behavior.
The point is not to turn a parent into an undercover agent.
It is to recognize a change in direction—and act before attention becomes isolation, or isolation becomes coercion.
The scale of online child sexual exploitation is difficult to hear and easy to misuse.
Reports of online enticement rose sharply in two thousand twenty-five.
NCMEC says its CyberTipline received more than twenty-one million reports.
The data does show the threat is moving quickly across the same connected spaces where young people socialize.
NCMEC reported that online-enticement reports have risen sharply in the past year.
That is why parents should not wait for one dramatic statistic to tell them whether the risk is real.
Federal investigators and child-protection specialists have documented the pattern: offenders go where children communicate, learn the platform's language, and use its ordinary features to build extraordinary leverage.
Now generative artificial intelligence, or AI, has added another weapon.
NCMEC says its CyberTipline received forty-seven hundred reports with a generative-AI connection in two thousand twenty-three. That rose to 67,000 in 2024 and to more than 400,000 in 2025.
Child predators use AI to create fake explicit images for blackmail, sexual coercion, and financial demands.
Young people can also use so-called nudify tools to manufacture images of classmates and spread them through a school.
A fabricated image can still create a real victim.
The child may know the picture is false.
Friends may know it is false. That does not stop humiliation, bullying, or the threat that the image will reach family members, classmates, and teachers.
Technology has lowered the cost of creating the weapon. It has not reduced the damage when the weapon is used.
What’s a parent to do?
They don’t have to master every platform overnight. They do need a repeatable routine.
First, create an individual child account and use the child’s correct age.
Do not hand a child an unrestricted adult profile. Age-based accounts can help limit content, communication, spending, and screen time.
Controls vary by game, device, and platform, so verify what the service actually offers.
Second, check both the rating and the interactive features.
Ratings can describe content. They do not tell you everything about live chat, user-created material, outside links, or how a game may change after an update.
Third, control who can communicate.
Start with people the child knows in real life or an adult-approved list.
Turn off voice or text chat when it is not needed. Teach children not to share a full name, school, location, passwords, or identifying photographs.
Fourth, lock down spending. Turn purchases off, require a password, or set a firm limit. A financial boundary can also reduce the leverage of someone offering currency, equipment, or gifts.
Fifth, make one family rule more important than every rule the child may have broken: If somebody asks for secrecy, sexual content, personal information, money, or a move to a private app, come tell us. You will not be blamed.
And sixth, playing alongside a child does more than reveal menus and controls. It gives a parent the language to ask better questions.
Who do you play with most?
What happens when someone becomes abusive?
Where do players go to chat?
What kinds of gifts do people exchange?
How do you block and report someone?
If somebody asked you to keep a conversation secret, what would you do?
Those questions work best before a crisis. In the middle of one, a frightened child may be trying to decide whether telling the truth will make the danger worse.
Make the answer clear before that moment arrives.
If a child is being threatened or sexually exploited, do not bargain with the offender. Do not pay. Do not send more material.
Preserve the available messages, usernames, and other evidence when it is safe and lawful to do so. Stop direct contact when it is safe.
Report the account to the platform.
Contact local law enforcement, an FBI field office, 1-800-CALL-FBI, or the FBI’s online tips portal.
Suspected child sexual exploitation can also be reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children CyberTipline.
If an explicit image or video was taken before the victim turned eighteen, the center’s free Take It Down service may help participating platforms detect and remove it. The service creates a digital fingerprint, called a hash, on the device. The image or video itself does not have to be uploaded.
Do not download or forward an image just to submit it. Use only material already on the device and follow the service’s instructions.
And remember what the offender wants the child to forget: the child is the victim of a crime.
The FBI’s guidance is blunt. Even if a young person accepted money or game credits, entered a site they were too young to use, sent an image, or violated a family rule, they are not the one in trouble.
That is not an excuse. It is the starting point for rescue.
Online gaming is a front door into children’s lives. For many young people, it is where life happens—where they compete, create, laugh, argue, spend, and belong.
The answer isn't to treat every game like a crime scene. It is to stop treating the game as only a game.
Know the people. Know the chat. Know the money. Know where the conversation can go next.
Put controls in place, but do not confuse controls with a relationship.
A predator succeeds by convincing a child that secrecy is the only safe choice.
The strongest protection is a child who knows what to notice, knows how to leave, and knows exactly which adult will listen without blame.
