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

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

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

The web conversation quickly grew intimate, after which turned criminal.

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

The San Jose, California, teen advised the cybercriminal he couldn't pay the full quantity, and the demand was in the end lowered to a fraction of the unique determine -- $150. However after paying the scammers from his faculty savings, Stuart said, "They kept demanding increasingly and putting a lot of continued pressure on him."

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

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 observe describing how embarrassed he was for himself and the household.

"He really, really thought in that point that there wasn't a approach to get by if those footage had been really posted on-line," Pauline mentioned. "His note confirmed he was absolutely terrified. No child should must be that scared."

Law 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 have been over 18,000 sextortion-related complaints in 2021, with losses in extra of $13 million. The FBI says using youngster pornography by criminals to lure suspects additionally constitutes a serious crime.

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

"To be a criminal that specifically targets youngsters -- it's one of many extra deeper violations of belief I think in society," says FBI Supervisory Particular Agent Dan Costin, who leads a workforce of investigators working to counter crimes in opposition to children.

In accordance with Costin, most 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 law enforcement counterparts around the world, Costin mentioned, to help determine and arrest perpetrators who're targeting children on-line.

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

"The embarrassment piece of this is probably one of many bigger hurdles that the victims have to overcome," mentioned Costin. "It can be so much, especially in that second."

But investigators urge victims to rapidly contact law enforcement, either online or at their local FBI field workplace.

Medical experts say there is a key purpose why younger males are particularly susceptible to sextortion-related scams.

"Teen brains are nonetheless growing," stated Dr. Scott Hadland, chief of adolescent medication at Mass General in Boston. "So when one thing catastrophic occurs, like a private picture is launched to folks on-line, it's laborious for them to look past that second and understand that in the large scheme of issues they'll be capable of get through this."

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

"An important thing that a father or mother ought to do with their teen is attempt to perceive what they're doing on-line," she said. "You wish to know after they're going online, who they're interacting with, what platforms they're using. Are they being approached by people who they don't know, are they experiencing pressure to share data or images?"

Hadland said it's also critical that folks particularly warn teens of scams like sextortion, without shaming them.

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

Ryan's mother agrees.

"It is advisable to discuss to your youngsters because we have to make them aware of it," Stuart said.

Still grieving the loss of her son, she is channeling her household's pain into motion, and honoring Ryan by talking out and telling his story. She hopes that doing so will assist save lives.

"How may these folks look at themselves in the mirror realizing that $150 is extra important than a toddler's life?" she says. "There isn't any other word but 'evil' for me that they care way more about money than a child's life. I do not want anybody else to undergo what we did."