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

Within 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, and they began a dialog," his mother, Pauline Stuart, told CNN, preventing back tears as she described what occurred to her son days after she and Ryan had finished visiting several schools he was considering attending after graduating high school.

The net conversation rapidly grew intimate, and then turned prison.

The scammer -- posing as a younger woman -- despatched Ryan a nude photograph and then requested Ryan to share an explicit picture of himself in return. Instantly after Ryan shared an intimate photograph of his own, the cybercriminal demanded $5,000, threatening to make the photograph public and send it to Ryan's household and pals.

The San Jose, California, teen told the cybercriminal he could not pay the full amount, and the demand was finally lowered to a fraction of the original determine -- $150. But after paying the scammers from his school financial savings, Stuart stated, "They stored demanding increasingly and placing lots of continued stress on him."

On the time, Stuart knew none of what her son was experiencing. She realized the details after law enforcement investigators reconstructed the occasions leading as much as his death.

She had said goodnight to Ryan at 10 p.m., and described him as her usually happy son. By 2 a.m., he had been scammed, and brought his life. Ryan left behind a suicide note describing how embarrassed he was for himself and the household.

"He actually, truly thought in that point that there wasn't a strategy to get by if these footage were truly posted on-line," Pauline stated. "His note showed he was absolutely terrified. No baby ought to need to be that scared."

Regulation enforcement calls the rip-off "sextortion," and investigators have seen an explosion in complaints from victims main the FBI to ramp up a campaign to warn parents from coast to coast.

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

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

"To be a legal that particularly targets kids -- it's one of the extra deeper violations of trust I believe in society," says FBI Supervisory Special Agent Dan Costin, who leads a team of investigators working to counter crimes in opposition to youngsters.

In response to Costin, many of the sextortion scams reported to the FBI are determined to be from criminals on the African continent and in Southeast Asia. Federal investigators are working with their legislation enforcement counterparts all over the world, Costin stated, to assist establish and arrest perpetrators who're targeting children online.

One challenge for the FBI: many victims of sextortion don't report the incidents to law enforcement.

"The embarrassment piece of that is in all probability one of the greater hurdles that the victims have to overcome," mentioned Costin. "It may be so much, especially in that second."

But investigators urge victims to quickly contact regulation enforcement, both online or at their local FBI discipline workplace.

Medical experts say there's a key purpose why younger males are especially susceptible to sextortion-related scams.

"Teen brains are nonetheless creating," mentioned Dr. Scott Hadland, chief of adolescent medication at Mass Common in Boston. "So when one thing catastrophic happens, like a private image is launched to folks online, it is laborious for them to look previous that moment and perceive that within the big scheme of things they will be capable of get by means of this."

Hadland said there are steps dad and mom can take to assist safeguard their kids from online harm.

"A very powerful factor that a dad or mum ought to do with their teen is try to perceive what they're doing on-line," she mentioned. "You need to know after they're going surfing, who they're interacting with, what platforms they're using. Are they being approached by people who they don't know, are they experiencing strain to share info or photos?"

Hadland stated it is also critical that oldsters specifically warn teenagers of scams like sextortion, with out shaming them.

"You wish to make it clear that they will discuss to you if they have executed something, or they really feel like they've made a mistake," he said.

Ryan's mom agrees.

"You must speak to your kids because we have to make them conscious of it," Stuart mentioned.

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

"How could these individuals have a look at themselves in the mirror figuring out that $150 is extra essential than a baby's life?" she says. "There is not any other phrase however 'evil' for me that they care far more about cash than a child's life. I don't want anyone else to go through what we did."