Sextortion - Detective Henry Snowden

St. Petersburg is seeing a wave of extortion cases using nudes aka sextortion. The criminals are meeting victims on social media or dating apps, encouraging them to send nude pictures, then demanding money to keep those photos out of friends' and family's inboxes. It's double the rate from a year ago, and worse yet, many of the victims are minors. We speak with St. Petersburg Police Detective Henry Snowden on how to avoid becoming a victim and how to keep your child from becoming a victim.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Gordon Bird here with Beyond the Newsonline. Extortion. Sex extortion is apparently
on the increase in a lot ofplaces, including Saint Petersburg, where police
say the cases have more than doubledcompared to this time a year ago.
We have Detective Henry Snowdon of theSaint Petersburg Police Department online to help us
figure out what's going on in thisarea. Detective Snowdon, thank you for

(00:22):
joining us on Beyond the News.Yes, sir, thank you for having
me. So what is happening here? People are asking for nude pictures and
then demanding money to keep them private. What's the context here? Yes,
sir, So, we have seena substantial increase in the amount of extortion

(00:45):
cases that we've received this year.People also may know it as blackmail,
So basically I'll give you an examplefor far as numbers wise, there's been
a sixty six percent increase on extortioncases from for children from this time last

(01:07):
year, and there's been an approximatelyforty four percent increase for adults this time
last year. From the month ofJanuary first through June first, we received
approximately thirty four cases involving victims bothunder the age and adults, And what's

(01:30):
happening is a lot of these victimsthey're interacting with the suspects on social media
platforms, game platforms, dating platforms. They'll befriend them, They'll go back
and forth with conversation. The suspectwould then send a picture of himself or

(01:53):
herself. It may be a regularpicture initially, then it starts escalating into
an appropriate picture, and then escalatinginto a nude picture. That's when the
victim would send over a either regularor inappropriate or a nude photo as well.
And then once they send over thatinappropriate and nude photo, that's when

(02:16):
the suspect would then demand money,and if the victim does not pay the
money, then the suspect would threatwill make a threat to expose those photos
online to family members or other thingsof that nature. So there's a serious
problem here. We've got, ofcourse, adults and then children, which

(02:38):
is a whole different set, awhole different escalation here. With the adults,
what sort of advice are you givingto people who go on social media
or dating apps and find themselves withsomeone appearing to be interested in a romantic
relationship and then start starting to askfor these pictures. That's an excellent question.

(03:04):
So the advice I would give toadults and children would be be mindful
of what you're sending out the contextof the pictures that you're sending out,
because once you send pictures, regardlessif it's a normal picture or if it's
inappropriate or a nude picture, it'sout there. It's hard to sometimes get

(03:25):
these pictures back. And then onceyou send them out there, you know,
these suspects jump on it quick andthen they extort the victims out of
money monetary gains, and it canbecome a catastrophe, to say the least.
And with children, you've got awhole different dimension here. Now the

(03:47):
parents obviously need to be involved withthat, and some of the victims might
be afraid of going to their parents, or what is your advice to parents
as far as helping to kind ofinsulate their children and make sure that they're
not victimized in this way. Again, another great question so far is that

(04:08):
I know a lot of these conversationscould probably be difficult or maybe uncomfortable to
have with their children, but it'simportant, and I express the importance of
it, you know, being mindfuland being aware of what your children are
doing on their cell phones, onthese social media sites, on these dating

(04:29):
platforms, because once they make amistake, that could be the beginning of
something very detrimental that we're trying toprevent. That's why we're putting this information
out. And what resources are availableif a person thinks they or their child
have been the victim of this kindof extortion, What are the resources that

(04:50):
are available from the Saint Pete Policedepartments. What if they do feel like
they've been a victim of extortion orain't they of this nature? Please call
the Saint Petersburg Police Department. Thatway, patrol responding patrol officers can get
involved, and we as detectives canget involved as well, so we can

(05:13):
initiate the early steps of the investigationto figure out what's going on. It's
scary out there. Detective Henry Snowden, who is with the Saint Petersburg Police
Department as they are investigating a spikein the number of cases of online sexting
and texting extortion cases. Detective Snowdon, thank you very much for joining us

(05:36):
on Beyond the News. Thank you, thank you for having