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

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

"Any individual reached out to him pretending to be a lady, and so they started a conversation," his mom, Pauline Stuart, told CNN, combating back tears as she described what occurred to her son days after she and Ryan had completed visiting several schools he was considering attending after graduating high school.

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

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

The San Jose, California, teen informed the cybercriminal he couldn't pay the total quantity, and the demand was ultimately lowered to a fraction of the original figure -- $150. However after paying the scammers from his faculty financial savings, Stuart stated, "They saved demanding an increasing number of and putting plenty of continued strain on him."

At the time, Stuart knew none of what her son was experiencing. She learned the small print after regulation enforcement investigators reconstructed the events main as much as his dying.

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

"He really, actually thought in that point that there wasn't a technique to get by if these photos were truly posted on-line," Pauline mentioned. "His be aware confirmed he was completely terrified. No baby should must be that scared."

Law enforcement calls the scam "sextortion," and investigators have seen an explosion in complaints from victims leading the FBI to ramp up a marketing 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 using baby pornography by criminals to lure suspects also constitutes a serious crime.

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

"To be a felony that specifically targets kids -- it's one of the more deeper violations of belief I feel in society," says FBI Supervisory Special Agent Dan Costin, who leads a group of investigators working to counter crimes in opposition to kids.

In accordance with Costin, many of the sextortion scams reported to the FBI are decided to be from criminals on the African continent and in Southeast Asia. Federal investigators are working with their regulation enforcement counterparts around the globe, Costin stated, to help determine and arrest perpetrators who are concentrating on youngsters online.

One challenge 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 many bigger hurdles that the victims have to beat," said Costin. "It may be rather a lot, especially in that second."

However investigators urge victims to rapidly contact law enforcement, both on-line or at their native FBI area workplace.

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

"Teen brains are still developing," stated Dr. Scott Hadland, chief of adolescent drugs at Mass General in Boston. "So when something catastrophic happens, like a personal picture is launched to folks online, it is hard for them to look past that second and understand that in the massive scheme of things they're going to be capable to get by means of this."

Hadland stated there are steps mother and father can take to help safeguard their kids from online harm.

"An important factor that a dad or mum should do with their teen is try to perceive what they're doing on-line," she stated. "You need to know after they're going online, who they're interacting with, what platforms they're using. Are they being approached by those that they do not know, are they experiencing stress to share information or photos?"

Hadland stated it is also essential that folks specifically warn teens of scams like sextortion, with out shaming them.

"You wish to make it clear that they will talk to you if they've carried out one thing, or they feel like they've made a mistake," he stated.

Ryan's mother agrees.

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

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 may these individuals take a look at themselves in the mirror figuring out that $150 is extra necessary than a child's life?" she says. "There's no other word but 'evil' for me that they care rather more about cash than a baby's life. I don't want anybody else to go through what we did."