If someone is blackmailing you, don’t pay, save every message and threat as evidence before you do anything else, and report the crime to your local police and the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. Blackmail is a serious crime in every state and under federal law, and people who report it almost always end up in a stronger position than people who try to make the problem go away by complying. Paying rarely stops the threats. Reporting often does.
Don’t Pay and Don’t Negotiate
The instinct to pay and make it stop is understandable, and it almost always backfires. Once a blackmailer learns you’ll pay, you become a reliable source of income, and the demands escalate. The FBI’s guidance is direct on this point: cooperating with the predator rarely stops the blackmail, but law enforcement can.1Federal Bureau of Investigation. Financially Motivated Sextortion Whatever the demand is — money, more images, account access, a favor — refuse it. Every payment and every concession tells the blackmailer their leverage works.
If you’ve already paid, you’re not out of options. Contact your bank or payment provider immediately. Wire transfers through a remittance provider sometimes have a brief cancellation window, which can be as short as 30 minutes for international transfers. Peer-to-peer apps, cryptocurrency, and gift cards are much harder to recover, but you should still report the transaction to the platform and to law enforcement. Having already paid does not disqualify you from filing a police report or an FBI complaint. It often strengthens the case, because there is now a documented financial crime.
Save the Evidence Before You Do Anything Else
Before you block anyone, delete anything, or change a single password, capture every piece of evidence you can. Messages, voicemails, emails, social media exchanges, payment confirmations — all of it is proof that investigators and prosecutors need. The urge to delete threatening content is strong, especially when it’s embarrassing or frightening, but erasing it destroys the thing that can hold the blackmailer accountable.
What to save:
- Screenshots of every conversation, with the blackmailer’s username, phone number, or contact information visible along with dates and timestamps.
- Original message files where possible, not just screenshots. Original emails, voicemails, and attachments carry metadata about when and where the message was sent, which helps investigators trace the sender.
- Full email headers for email-based threats, not just the message body. Headers contain IP address information. Search your email provider’s help pages for instructions specific to Gmail, Outlook, or whatever platform you use.
- A written timeline. Note when the blackmail started, what was threatened, what was demanded, and how the demands changed over time. This summary lets law enforcement see the full picture quickly.
Store copies in at least two places — a cloud drive and a USB stick, say, or a secondary email account. If your phone is lost or an account gets compromised, you don’t want the evidence to vanish with it.
Secure Your Accounts, Then Block
With evidence saved, lock down your digital life. Change passwords on your email, social media, banking apps, and anything else sensitive. Use a strong, unique password for each, and turn on two-factor authentication wherever it’s available. This stops the blackmailer from breaking into your accounts to find more leverage or to impersonate you.
After the accounts are hardened, block the blackmailer on every platform where they’ve contacted you. The FBI recommends saving the profile and messages and then blocking the account.1Federal Bureau of Investigation. Financially Motivated Sextortion The order matters: save first, then block. Also report the account through each platform’s abuse or safety-reporting tool. That creates an additional record and may get the account suspended.
Report to Law Enforcement
Blackmail is a serious crime in every jurisdiction, and police departments handle these investigations regularly. Start by filing a report with your local police department or sheriff’s office. Bring the evidence you’ve preserved — screenshots, saved messages, your timeline, and any records of payments. A well-organized evidence package makes the officer’s job easier and signals that you’re a credible, cooperative complainant.
If any part of the blackmail happened online or crossed state lines, also file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) at ic3.gov. The IC3 is the federal government’s central hub for cybercrime reporting, and online extortion is squarely within its scope.2Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). About – Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) Complaints are analyzed and may be referred to federal, state, local, or international law enforcement for investigation.
The online form asks for your contact information, a description of what happened, details about any money lost, and whatever identifying information you have about the blackmailer — names, usernames, email addresses, phone numbers, website URLs. There’s a technical details field for things like email headers and cryptocurrency wallet addresses.3Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). Complaint Form – Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) You don’t need a lawyer or special knowledge to file. The form walks you through it.
If the blackmailer demanded a bank transfer or any payment through a financial institution, notify your bank’s fraud department as well. Give them the transaction details and a copy of your police report. Banks have internal fraud teams and reporting obligations that can help trace where the money went, even when a full reversal isn’t possible.
If the Blackmail Involves Intimate Images
Sextortion — blackmail built around threats to share sexual or nude images — is one of the fastest-growing forms of online extortion, and all the steps above still apply. You also have two additional free tools that attack the blackmailer’s leverage directly by removing the images from participating platforms.
Images Taken When You Were Under 18
Use NCMEC’s Take It Down service at takeitdown.ncmec.org. The service generates a digital fingerprint (a “hash”) of the image on your own device. You never upload the actual photo.4National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Take It Down That hash is shared with participating online platforms, which scan for matches and can remove them. You can use the service anonymously.
Images Taken When You Were 18 or Older
Adults can use StopNCII.org, which works the same way: the hash is generated on your device without uploading the image itself.5StopNCII.org. Stop Non-Consensual Intimate Image Abuse To use it, you must be the person depicted, currently over 18, and still have the image on your device. Coverage depends on which platforms participate, and the tool works only on public or unencrypted sites. Private messages and encrypted platforms are not scanned.
Neither tool guarantees every copy will disappear. Content that has already spread widely or landed on non-participating sites may persist. But both tools meaningfully reduce the blackmailer’s ability to follow through, which often takes the power out of the situation entirely.
What the Blackmailer Is Actually Facing
Federal law treats blackmail and extortion as serious crimes, and several statutes may apply depending on how the threats were sent and what was threatened.
The most commonly charged federal extortion statute covers threats sent through interstate communications: phone calls, texts, emails, or online messages that cross state lines. If the blackmailer threatened to kidnap someone or cause physical harm to extort money, the maximum sentence is 20 years in federal prison. If the threat was to damage someone’s property or reputation, or to accuse them of a crime, the maximum is two years.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 875 – Interstate Communications The same ranges apply when threats are sent through the mail.
A narrower federal statute specifically titled “Blackmail” covers threats to report a federal law violation unless the victim pays. That offense carries up to one year in prison.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 873 – Blackmail
Those federal numbers aren’t the whole story. Every state has its own extortion or blackmail statute, and many classify it as a felony with significantly longer sentences. A felony conviction carries lasting consequences for the offender beyond prison time, including a permanent criminal record. Knowing the weight of what the blackmailer is risking can make the decision to report feel less lopsided.
When to Bring in a Lawyer
Law enforcement handles the criminal case. A private attorney works for you personally and can pursue remedies prosecutors won’t. The two tracks run separately and can happen at the same time.
A lawyer’s most immediate value is often helping you get a civil restraining order or protective order. These court orders legally prohibit the blackmailer from contacting you, approaching you, or continuing the harassment. Violating the order is a separate criminal offense, which gives the blackmailer a concrete reason to stop beyond the pending investigation. You can seek a restraining order without a lawyer in most courts, but an attorney can move it through faster and handle complications like an anonymous or out-of-state blackmailer.
An attorney can also file a civil lawsuit to recover financial damages: money you were forced to pay, lost income, therapy or security costs, and compensation for emotional distress. Civil cases run on a lower burden of proof than criminal cases, so even if prosecutors decline to charge or the criminal case stalls, you may still have a viable path to hold the blackmailer financially accountable.
If keeping sensitive information private during legal proceedings is a major concern, raise it with your attorney early. Courts in some circumstances allow plaintiffs to proceed under a pseudonym, but the standards vary by jurisdiction and there’s no automatic right to it. Your lawyer can tell you whether a pseudonym filing is realistic in your situation and what other privacy protections are available if it isn’t.