What Is the Difference Between Blackmail and Extortion?

The difference between blackmail and extortion comes down to the type of threat. Extortion is the broader crime of pressuring someone into giving up money, property, or services through any coercive threat, whether that means violence, property damage, financial harm, or abuse of government power. Blackmail is a narrower version that sits inside extortion: the threat is specifically to reveal damaging, embarrassing, or secret information unless the victim pays. All blackmail is a form of extortion, but not all extortion is blackmail.

What Extortion Covers

Extortion is coercing someone into handing over something of value by threatening harm. The harm doesn’t have to be physical. A threat to destroy a business, vandalize property, or wreck someone financially counts just as much as a threat of violence. The classic example is a criminal demanding “protection money” from a shop owner, with the understanding that the shop or the owner will suffer if the money isn’t paid.

What separates extortion from ordinary theft is consent that isn’t really consent. The victim hands over the property, but only because the threat left no real choice. Under federal law, the Hobbs Act defines extortion as obtaining property from someone, with their consent, through the wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear.¹

The Hobbs Act also reaches a second category: demands made “under color of official right,” which covers public officials who use their position to extract payments they aren’t entitled to.²

What Blackmail Covers

Blackmail narrows the field to one kind of threat: revealing information. The leverage isn’t physical danger or property damage but reputational or personal ruin. Someone who learns a coworker is having an affair and demands money to keep quiet is committing blackmail. The information doesn’t have to be illegal to share. Weaponizing it for payment is what makes the conduct criminal.

Federal law splits blackmail across two statutes, and the split matters. The statute actually titled “blackmail,” 18 U.S.C. § 873, is narrow: it covers demanding money in exchange for not reporting someone’s violation of federal law.³ Threatening to turn someone in to the IRS for tax fraud unless they pay you falls here. Threatening to tell their spouse about an affair does not.

The gap is filled by 18 U.S.C. § 875(d), which makes it a federal crime to send a communication across state lines threatening to harm someone’s reputation or accuse them of a crime, with intent to extort money.⁴ This is the provision prosecutors reach for in most blackmail cases involving personal secrets, private photos, or workplace rumors, because it doesn’t require the underlying information to involve a federal offense.

One point worth knowing: it doesn’t matter whether the information the blackmailer threatens to reveal is actually true. The crime is the coercive demand itself. Threatening to spread a complete lie about someone unless they pay is still blackmail, because the offense turns on using fear of disclosure as leverage, not on whether the disclosure would be accurate.

How the Two Crimes Line Up

Picture extortion as the umbrella and blackmail as one specific thing underneath it. Extortion covers any coercive scheme where threats pry money or property loose. Blackmail is the version where the threat involves exposing information.

Extortion threats include physical violence, property damage, economic harm, or abuse of government authority.
Blackmail threats include revealing embarrassing secrets, exposing illegal conduct, sharing private images, or damaging someone’s reputation.

The vocabulary gets tangled at the state level. Many states fold both crimes into a single statute, sometimes labeling it “extortion,” sometimes “blackmail,” sometimes “theft by extortion.” The labels shift but the conduct covered is essentially the same. A threat to break someone’s legs unless they pay is extortion but not blackmail, because no information is being leveraged. A threat to publish someone’s affair unless they pay is both.

Federal Penalties for Each

The penalties show how seriously federal law treats the escalation from informational threats to physical ones. The range runs from one year to twenty.

Hobbs Act extortion under 18 U.S.C. § 1951 carries up to twenty years in prison and is typically used when extortion involves violence or the threat of violence and affects interstate commerce.¹
Interstate threats of violence with intent to extort, under 18 U.S.C. § 875(b), also carry up to twenty years.⁴
Interstate threats to reputation or property with intent to extort, under 18 U.S.C. § 875(d), carry up to two years. This provision covers most traditional blackmail involving secrets or accusations of a crime.⁴
Federal blackmail under 18 U.S.C. § 873 carries up to one year and applies specifically to demanding money in exchange for not reporting a federal crime.³

State penalties stack on top of federal exposure. Many states classify extortion as a felony with prison terms running from two to fifteen years depending on the severity of the threat and the amount demanded. A single act can violate both state and federal law, which means a defendant may face prosecution in both systems.

Sextortion as a Modern Form of Blackmail

Sextortion is the fastest-growing form of blackmail. The pattern is familiar: someone obtains intimate images of a victim through a relationship, hacking, or deception, then threatens to distribute them unless the victim pays or produces more images. The leverage is purely informational, which places sextortion squarely inside the blackmail category rather than violent extortion.

Federal prosecutors typically charge sextortion under 18 U.S.C. § 875(d) when the threats cross state lines, carrying up to two years. If physical threats accompany the demand, § 875(b) applies and the ceiling jumps to twenty years.⁴ Cases involving minors are treated far more severely and can be charged under the sexual exploitation of children statutes, which carry a mandatory minimum of fifteen years. The Take It Down Act, signed into law in 2025, added a federal offense for publishing or threatening to publish sexually explicit images without consent.

What to Do If You Are Being Threatened

If someone is extorting or blackmailing you, the first few hours matter. The instinct to delete the threatening messages or quietly pay almost always backfires. Payment rarely stops the demands, and deleting evidence makes prosecution harder.

Preserve everything first. Don’t delete messages, emails, or voicemails. Screenshot each communication, capturing the sender’s information, timestamps, and the full text. Print copies when possible. Write down what was said and anything you know about the person making the threat.⁵

Where you report depends on the situation. Call 911 if you’re in immediate physical danger. For federal extortion or blackmail, contact your local FBI field office or submit a tip at tips.fbi.gov. If the threats came through the internet, email, or social media, file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov.⁶ Not every case meets the threshold for federal investigation; when it doesn’t, your local police department handles the matter under state law. Either way, the evidence you preserved early is what gives investigators something to work with.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1951 – Interference With Commerce by Threats or Violence
2
United States Courts for the Ninth Circuit. 9.7 Hobbs Act – Extortion or Attempted Extortion Under Color of Official Right
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 873 – Blackmail
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 875 – Interstate Communications
5
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Threat Intimidation Guide
6
Internet Crime Complaint Center. Welcome to the Internet Crime Complaint Center