Dating scam victims urged: “Talk to someone you trust”

Fraud teams at Nationwide, the UK's biggest building society, are encouraging students — and other potential victims — to speak up when faced with blackmail following a dating scam.

According to the teams, friends can help prevent potential victims from sharing intimate images or videos during a new online relationship, the BBC reports.

Annya Burksys, head of fraud operations at Nationwide, said that “sextortion” scams were "commonplace" among students. These scams are a type of online blackmail, where a criminal tricks a victim into sharing sensitive personal material and then threatens to expose it unless their demands, which are typically financial, are met.

Victims are usually males between the ages of 14 to 17, according to the FBI, but of course, any child can become a victim.

Criminals can be quite inventive when deciding on their perfect tactic. One man in his 40s, who is now in prison, worked as a youth minister to learn about ways in which teens interact with each other. Then, he pretended to be a teenage girl to convince boys online to send explicit video materials.

Other cases involve offering currency or credits in a video game in exchange for private pictures, or even “real” money. In a separate case, a criminal threatened a girl that he would bomb her school and hurt her if she refused to send images.

Most of the crooks have multiple online accounts and talk to several victims at the same time.

In 2024, the BBC requested every police force in the UK to reveal the reported blackmail offences featuring the word "sextortion" over the last decade. The 33 forces (out of a total of 45) who responded recorded almost 8,000 blackmail cases logged with a reference to sextortion in 2023, according to the publication. This is in contrast to 23 cases recorded by the same number of forces in 2014.

What to do if you suspect sextortion?

Jim Winters, head of economic crime at Nationwide, encourages people not to overshare personal materials with someone they’ve just met online, reminding them that once something is shared, they will never regain control over it again.

But how to go about a suspicious case? Winters suggests staying alert for odd messages that don’t correspond to what you’ve said, checking profile photos through a search engine to see if they’ve been used elsewhere, showing messages to someone else for a second opinion, and reporting the incident to authorities if faced with blackmail.

"Talk to someone you trust, maybe a friend or family member. Don't suffer in silence," he said.

You might want to check out our article about how not to react when faced with a sextortion scam. Spoiler: first of all, don’t panic.