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

Inside hours, the 17-year-old, straight-A pupil and Boy Scout had died by suicide.

"Somebody reached out to him pretending to be a girl, they usually started a conversation," his mother, Pauline Stuart, told CNN, fighting again tears as she described what happened to her son days after she and Ryan had completed visiting a number of colleges he was considering attending after graduating high school.

The web conversation shortly grew intimate, after which turned felony.

The scammer -- posing as a young girl -- sent Ryan a nude photo after which asked Ryan to share an explicit image of himself in return. Immediately after Ryan shared an intimate photo of his own, the cybercriminal demanded $5,000, threatening to make the picture public and send it to Ryan's household and buddies.

The San Jose, California, teen informed the cybercriminal he could not pay the complete amount, and the demand was ultimately lowered to a fraction of the original determine -- $150. However after paying the scammers from his faculty savings, Stuart said, "They kept demanding increasingly and placing lots of continued pressure on him."

At the time, Stuart knew none of what her son was experiencing. She realized the small print after law enforcement investigators reconstructed the events main up to his dying.

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

"He really, really thought in that time that there wasn't a technique to get by if those pictures had been truly posted on-line," Pauline said. "His observe showed he was absolutely terrified. No little one should need to be that scared."

Legislation enforcement calls the scam "sextortion," and investigators have seen an explosion in complaints from victims main the FBI to ramp up a campaign to warn dad and mom from coast to coast.

The bureau says there have been over 18,000 sextortion-related complaints in 2021, with losses in excess of $13 million. The FBI says the use of baby pornography by criminals to lure suspects additionally constitutes a severe crime.

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

"To be a legal that specifically targets youngsters -- it's one of the more deeper violations of trust I think in society," says FBI Supervisory Particular Agent Dan Costin, who leads a team of investigators working to counter crimes towards kids.

According to Costin, most 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 law enforcement counterparts around the globe, Costin said, to help identify and arrest perpetrators who are focusing on children online.

One problem for the FBI: many victims of sextortion do not report the incidents to regulation enforcement.

"The embarrassment piece of that is in all probability one of the greater hurdles that the victims have to beat," mentioned Costin. "It may be a lot, particularly in that moment."

But investigators urge victims to quickly contact law enforcement, either on-line or at their native FBI field workplace.

Medical consultants say there is a key reason why younger males are especially weak to sextortion-related scams.

"Teen brains are nonetheless developing," stated Dr. Scott Hadland, chief of adolescent drugs at Mass Basic in Boston. "So when something catastrophic occurs, like a private picture is released to individuals on-line, it's onerous for them to look previous that second and understand that within the huge scheme of issues they're going to have the ability to get via this."

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

"An important factor that a parent should do with their teen is try to understand what they're doing online," she mentioned. "You need to know after they're logging on, who they're interacting with, what platforms they're using. Are they being approached by those who they don't know, are they experiencing pressure to share info or photographs?"

Hadland said it is also vital that folks particularly warn teens of scams like sextortion, with out shaming them.

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

Ryan's mother agrees.

"You'll want to discuss to your children because we need to make them conscious of it," Stuart stated.

Still grieving the lack of her son, she is channeling her household'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 people look at themselves within the mirror figuring out that $150 is extra vital than a child's life?" she says. "There is not any other phrase however 'evil' for me that they care much more about cash than a child's life. I don't want anyone else to go through what we did."