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’ circumstances.

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, and they started a conversation," his mom, Pauline Stuart, informed CNN, fighting back tears as she described what happened to her son days after she and Ryan had completed visiting several schools he was considering attending after graduating high school.

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

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

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

On the time, Stuart knew none of what her son was experiencing. She learned the details after legislation enforcement investigators reconstructed the occasions leading as much as his death.

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

"He actually, actually thought in that time that there wasn't a strategy to get by if those footage have been really posted on-line," Pauline mentioned. "His note showed he was absolutely terrified. No youngster ought to must be that scared."

Regulation enforcement calls the scam "sextortion," and investigators have seen an explosion in complaints from victims leading the FBI to ramp up a campaign to warn parents 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 additionally constitutes a critical crime.

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

"To be a legal that particularly targets children -- it is one of many extra deeper violations of trust I think in society," says FBI Supervisory Special Agent Dan Costin, who leads a team of investigators working to counter crimes towards children.

In accordance with 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 legislation enforcement counterparts around the globe, Costin mentioned, to help identify and arrest perpetrators who are concentrating on children online.

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

"The embarrassment piece of this is most likely one of the greater hurdles that the victims have to overcome," said Costin. "It can be a lot, particularly in that second."

However investigators urge victims to shortly contact legislation enforcement, either online or at their native FBI area workplace.

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

"Teen brains are nonetheless growing," mentioned Dr. Scott Hadland, chief of adolescent medication at Mass Basic in Boston. "So when one thing catastrophic happens, like a personal image is released to folks on-line, it's arduous for them to look past that second and understand that in the big scheme of issues they'll be capable of get by way of this."

Hadland said there are steps dad and mom can take to assist safeguard their youngsters from on-line harm.

"An important thing that a father or mother ought to do with their teen is try to perceive what they're doing on-line," she stated. "You wish to know once they're logging on, who they're interacting with, what platforms they're utilizing. Are they being approached by people who they do not know, are they experiencing strain to share data or photographs?"

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

"You wish to make it clear that they'll talk to you if they have completed something, or they feel like they've made a mistake," he mentioned.

Ryan's mom agrees.

"It is advisable discuss to your children because we have to make them conscious of it," Stuart mentioned.

Nonetheless grieving the lack of her son, she is channeling her family's ache into action, and honoring Ryan by speaking out and telling his story. She hopes that doing so will assist save lives.

"How may these individuals look at themselves in the mirror understanding that $150 is more necessary than a baby's life?" she says. "There is not any different word but 'evil' for me that they care much more about cash than a toddler's life. I do not need anybody else to go through what we did."