Sextortion: Laws, Reporting, and Image Removal

If someone is threatening to release your intimate images unless you pay money, send more content, or do what they say, that crime is called sextortion, and you have options that do not involve paying. Stop responding to the perpetrator, do not delete anything, preserve every message and payment record, and report to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov. A 2025 federal law, the TAKE IT DOWN Act, now requires online platforms to remove non-consensual intimate images within 48 hours of a valid request, and separate tools from NCMEC and StopNCII.org can scan for and remove the images across major platforms without you ever uploading the content again.

The FBI’s IC3 logged 54,936 sextortion-related complaints in 2024, with victims losing a combined $33.5 million.¹ You are not the first person this has happened to, and you are not without recourse.

How to Recognize a Sextortion Scheme

Most schemes follow the same arc. A stranger contacts you on social media or a dating app using a fake profile, builds rapport quickly, and pushes the conversation toward exchanging explicit photos or video. The moment that material exists, the tone flips: pay now, send more, or the images go to your family, your employer, your followers. Perpetrators often show you a screenshot of your contact list or follower list to make the threat feel inescapable.²

Not every case starts with voluntary sharing. Some perpetrators hack into devices or cloud accounts and steal existing photos. Others use malware to activate a webcam without the victim knowing. The extortion follows the same way: threat tied to a demand.

You can also be targeted without ever having taken an intimate photo. A growing number of cases involve AI-generated fakes built from ordinary social media pictures, which the perpetrator then threatens to distribute as if real. The IC3’s 2024 report specifically flagged offenders “manipulating photos and videos to create explicit content and sextortion schemes.”¹

Financial sextortion aimed at teenagers and young adults moves especially fast on Instagram and Snapchat. A perpetrator posing as an attractive peer pushes for image exchanges within minutes, then immediately demands gift cards, wire transfers, or cryptocurrency. The FBI warns that offenders frequently release the material anyway, whether or not payment is sent.²

What to Do Right Now

The single most important thing to know: paying does not make it stop. The FBI is direct about this. Cooperating with a sextortion demand rarely ends the harassment, and perpetrators often release the content either way.³ Once you pay, the perpetrator learns you will pay, and demands escalate.

Do this instead:

Stop responding. Do not reply to further messages. Do not block the account yet, because blocking can prompt the perpetrator to delete it, which destroys evidence investigators need.
Preserve everything. Screenshot all conversations, profile pages, demands, and any proof of payment. Save full email headers if the contact came by email. Do not edit or crop anything.
Lock down your accounts. Set social media profiles to private. Remove follower lists from public view where the platform allows it. Change passwords on email and cloud storage.
Tell someone you trust. The FBI urges victims to reach out to a trusted adult, a friend, or law enforcement. Shame and secrecy are what give the perpetrator leverage.²
Report the account to the platform using its built-in tools for harassment or extortion.

Where to Report Sextortion

Reporting starts a potential criminal investigation and creates an official record that supports any later legal action. Use more than one channel.

FBI and IC3

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov is the primary federal intake point. The form asks for your contact information, details about the perpetrator (usernames, email addresses, IP addresses if you have them), a description of what happened, and financial transaction details if you sent payment. Include cryptocurrency wallet addresses and transaction hashes if crypto was involved. Save or print a copy of your report when you submit it, because IC3 does not email you one. Analysts route complaints to the appropriate agencies, but IC3 itself does not investigate and will not update you.⁴

You can also contact your local FBI field office directly or call 1-800-CALL-FBI. Do that if the situation is escalating or you feel in immediate danger.²

Local Police

A local report creates a record in your jurisdiction and can produce a faster response if the perpetrator is nearby. Bring printed copies of your screenshots, conversation logs, and payment records. If you have already filed with IC3, share those details so the agencies can coordinate.

If the Victim Is Under 18

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children runs the CyberTipline, which receives reports of suspected child sexual exploitation from the public and from online platforms. In 2024 the CyberTipline received more than 546,000 reports related to online enticement, a category NCMEC defines as including sextortion, and analysts escalated over 51,000 urgent cases to law enforcement.⁵ Reports go to CyberTipline.org.

Getting the Images Off the Internet

Removal is a separate track from criminal prosecution, and you should pursue both at once. Even if law enforcement catches the perpetrator, posted images will not come down on their own.

The TAKE IT DOWN Act

Signed into law on May 19, 2025, the TAKE IT DOWN Act is the first federal law that directly prohibits publishing non-consensual intimate images, including AI-generated fakes, and that forces platforms to remove them quickly.⁶ The law covers both real images shared without consent and digitally fabricated content realistic enough to be mistaken for an authentic image of the victim, defined as “digital forgeries” created through AI, machine learning, or other technology.⁷

Two provisions matter directly to victims:

Websites and apps that host user-generated content must create a process for victims to request removal of non-consensual intimate images. Platforms must take the reported content down within 48 hours of a valid request and make reasonable efforts to remove known identical copies.⁷
Publishing non-consensual intimate images, or threatening to publish them, is now a federal crime carrying prison time, fines, and mandatory restitution to victims.⁶

Platforms have one year from enactment to set up their removal processes. If you submit a request and the platform fails to act within 48 hours, that failure itself becomes a basis for enforcement action.

Take It Down (for Minors) and StopNCII.org (for Adults)

NCMEC’s Take It Down service helps keep explicit images of minors from spreading online, without ever requiring the victim to upload the actual images. You select the content on your own device, and the tool generates a unique digital fingerprint, called a hash, of each image or video. Only the hash is shared with participating platforms, which scan for matches and remove them. The victim can stay anonymous. The service is available to anyone whose explicit images were taken when they were under 18.⁸

If you are 18 or older and dealing with non-consensual images taken in adulthood, StopNCII.org uses the same hash-based approach for adults. You generate the fingerprint on your own device, and participating platforms scan for matches and remove them. Your actual images never leave your device.⁹

Google Search Removal

Google will remove non-consensual sexual content from its search results. You submit the URLs where the images appear along with screenshots to help identify the content. Google can issue a full removal (the page no longer appears in any search results) or a partial removal (the page disappears only from searches that include your name), and it attempts to find and remove duplicate copies.¹⁰ One limit: Google can only remove content from its search results. The images may still exist on the host site. To get them removed at the source, you need to contact the website owner or use the platform’s reporting process.

DMCA Takedown Notices

If you took the photos or videos yourself, you likely hold the copyright. A DMCA takedown notice sent to the hosting website can compel removal of copyrighted content. The notice has to identify the specific URLs where the infringing content appears, establish your ownership, and state that the content was posted without your authorization. Only the copyright owner or an authorized representative can file a valid notice.

The Criminal Laws That Apply

There is no single federal statute called “sextortion.” Prosecutors build cases using several laws depending on what the perpetrator did and whether a minor was involved.

When threats cross state lines or move over the internet, 18 U.S.C. § 875 applies. Threatening physical injury while demanding money carries up to 20 years. Threatening to damage someone’s reputation to extract payment, the scenario closest to typical sextortion, carries up to two years.¹¹ When the perpetrator hacked into your device, account, or webcam, 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(7) adds a computer-fraud charge for threatening to expose information obtained through unauthorized access to extort money.¹²

When the victim is under 18, the stakes rise sharply. Sexually explicit images of a minor qualify as child sexual abuse material under federal law regardless of how they were created or obtained, and are prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. § 2252A with severe mandatory minimum sentences.¹³¹⁴ Separately, 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b) makes it a crime to use the internet to coerce a minor into sexual activity, carrying a mandatory minimum of 10 years and a maximum of life.¹⁵ Courts must also order restitution for victims of federal child exploitation offenses under 18 U.S.C. § 2259, covering therapy, lost income, legal fees, and other documented losses, with a minimum of $3,000 for trafficking in child sexual abuse material and awards often much higher.¹⁶

Every state and the District of Columbia has some form of law prohibiting the non-consensual distribution of intimate images. First-offense classifications range from misdemeanor to felony depending on the state, and a few states allow sex offender registration at the judge’s discretion. Local law matters for anyone weighing their options.

Preserving Evidence

Everything you collect matters more than you think, and the biggest mistake victims make is deleting conversations out of panic or shame before anyone else can see them. Digital evidence has to stay unaltered to hold up in a legal proceeding. Once you edit a screenshot or modify a file, its reliability is in question.

Focus on these items:

Full chat histories with the perpetrator’s messages, demands, and threats, including timestamps.
The perpetrator’s usernames, profile URLs, account IDs, and any profile photos they used.
Payment records: wire transfer receipts, gift card numbers and photos of the cards, cryptocurrency wallet addresses, and transaction confirmations.
Full email headers if the contact came by email, which contain IP data investigators use to trace the origin.
Screenshots of every threat and demand, framed to show the perpetrator’s username and the timestamp together.

Store copies in at least two places, such as a secure cloud folder and an external drive. Do not post any of the preserved content on social media, since that can complicate both criminal proceedings and the hash-based removal tools above.

1
Internet Crime Complaint Center. 2024 IC3 Annual Report
2
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Sextortion
3
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Financially Motivated Sextortion
4
Internet Crime Complaint Center. Frequently Asked Questions
5
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. CyberTipline Data
6
Congress.gov. S.146 – TAKE IT DOWN Act 119th Congress (2025-2026)
7
Congress.gov. Text – S.146 – TAKE IT DOWN Act
8
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Take It Down
9
StopNCII. StopNCII.org
10
Google Search Help. Remove Personal Sexual Content From Google Search
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 875 – Interstate Communications
12
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1030 – Fraud and Related Activity in Connection With Computers
13
Department of Justice. Citizens Guide to US Federal Law on Child Pornography
14
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2252A – Certain Activities Relating to Material Constituting or Containing Child Pornography
15
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2422 – Coercion and Enticement
16
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2259 – Mandatory Restitution