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

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

"Anyone reached out to him pretending to be a lady, and they started a conversation," his mother, Pauline Stuart, advised CNN, fighting back tears as she described what happened to her son days after she and Ryan had finished visiting a number of schools he was contemplating attending after graduating high school.

The online conversation shortly grew intimate, and then turned prison.

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

The San Jose, California, teen told the cybercriminal he couldn't pay the full amount, and the demand was in the end lowered to a fraction of the original figure -- $150. But after paying the scammers from his school savings, Stuart mentioned, "They saved demanding increasingly more and placing a number of continued stress on him."

At the time, Stuart knew none of what her son was experiencing. She realized the main points after law enforcement investigators reconstructed the events leading as much as his dying.

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

"He actually, actually thought in that point that there wasn't a method to get by if these pictures have been really posted on-line," Pauline stated. "His be aware showed he was completely terrified. No child ought to should be that scared."

Regulation enforcement calls the scam "sextortion," and investigators have seen an explosion in complaints from victims main the FBI to ramp up a marketing campaign to warn mother and father 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 using little one pornography by criminals to lure suspects also constitutes a severe crime.

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

"To be a felony that specifically targets kids -- it is one of many extra deeper violations of belief I feel in society," says FBI Supervisory Particular Agent Dan Costin, who leads a staff of investigators working to counter crimes towards children.

According to Costin, lots 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 regulation enforcement counterparts around the world, Costin said, to help identify and arrest perpetrators who are focusing on youngsters online.

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

"The embarrassment piece of this is in all probability one of many larger hurdles that the victims have to beat," said Costin. "It can be a lot, especially in that second."

But investigators urge victims to shortly contact legislation enforcement, both online or at their local FBI field office.

Medical experts say there's a key cause why young males are especially weak to sextortion-related scams.

"Teen brains are still creating," mentioned Dr. Scott Hadland, chief of adolescent medicine at Mass Common in Boston. "So when something catastrophic occurs, like a personal image is launched to folks online, it's exhausting for them to look past that second and perceive that in the large scheme of issues they'll be able to get through this."

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

"An important factor that a parent ought to do with their teen is try to perceive what they're doing online," she mentioned. "You wish to know when they're logging on, who they're interacting with, what platforms they're using. Are they being approached by people that they do not know, are they experiencing stress to share information or pictures?"

Hadland mentioned it is also important that oldsters particularly warn teenagers of scams like sextortion, with out shaming them.

"You want to make it clear that they can discuss to you if they've carried out something, or they really feel like they've made a mistake," he said.

Ryan's mother agrees.

"You have to discuss to your children as a result of we need to make them aware of it," Stuart said.

Nonetheless grieving the lack 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 may these folks look at themselves within the mirror understanding that $150 is extra vital than a baby's life?" she says. "There isn't any other phrase but 'evil' for me that they care rather more about cash than a baby's life. I do not want anyone else to go through what we did."