If you’re being extorted, do not pay, do not delete anything the extorter has sent you, and report the threat to your local police and to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov. What to do if you’re being extorted comes down to those three moves, in that order, and the rest of this guide walks through how to carry each one out without making your situation worse.
Don’t Pay the Demand
Paying almost never ends it. It confirms that pressure works, which usually brings a second demand at a higher number. In sextortion cases specifically, the FBI has noted that offenders often release the material anyway, whether or not the victim pays.1FBI. Sextortion The same pattern shows up across every form of extortion: the person threatening you has already shown they will break the law, and there is no enforceable promise they will stop once you’ve handed something over.
If you’ve already paid, that doesn’t close the door on getting help. Write down what you sent, how you sent it, and when, then bring that record to law enforcement with the rest of your evidence. Officers who handle these cases understand the panic that drives people to comply, and an earlier payment doesn’t disqualify you from reporting.
Take Care of Your Immediate Safety
If the threats involve physical violence, or you think the person knows where you live or work, your safety takes priority over everything else. Change your routines, tell people you trust what is going on, and consider staying somewhere else for a while if the threats escalate. Call 911 if you believe you’re in immediate danger.
Extortion is designed to isolate you. Shame, fear, and the instinct to hide the situation are exactly what the extorter is counting on, because an isolated victim is more likely to pay. Telling a friend, family member, or a mental health professional isn’t a detour from solving the problem. It’s part of solving it. People who try to handle extortion alone are the ones who make panicked decisions.
Save Every Piece of Evidence
Everything the extorter sends you is potential evidence. Resist the urge to delete any of it, even messages that feel humiliating to keep. Save every text, email, voicemail, direct message, and letter. Take screenshots of the full conversation, with timestamps, the sender’s username or phone number, and the content of the threat visible. If the person is contacting you across multiple platforms, preserve the evidence from each one separately.
For emails, save the full message, not just a screenshot of the body text. The header contains routing information, including IP addresses that help investigators trace where the message came from. Most email programs let you view headers through an option like “Show Original” or “View Message Source.” Save or print the full header along with the message.
Keep a written log of every interaction: date, time, platform or method of contact, and a short summary of what was said or demanded. Even conversations that happened in person or over the phone with no recording are worth logging. Investigators build cases from exactly this kind of contemporaneous documentation.
Recording Phone Calls
A recording of an extortion call can be powerful evidence, but the rules depend on where you are. Federal law lets you record a conversation you’re a party to, with your own consent alone.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2511 – Interception and Disclosure of Wire, Oral, or Electronic Communications Prohibited But roughly a dozen states require every party on the call to consent before a recording is legal. If you aren’t sure which rule applies, ask an attorney or your local police before you record. A recording made illegally can create problems for you instead of the extorter.
Don’t Clean Anything Up
Don’t edit screenshots, delete messages to tidy up a thread, or forward evidence in ways that strip out metadata. If you’re unsure how to preserve something, leave it alone and ask law enforcement or an attorney. Evidence that looks untouched is far more useful than evidence that has been reorganized.
Report It
Extortion is a crime, and reporting is what gets it to stop. Many victims hesitate because they’re embarrassed about the underlying situation or afraid of retaliation. The people who handle these cases see them constantly. Their job is to stop the person threatening you.
Start with Local Police
File a report with your local police department and bring the evidence you’ve gathered: printouts, screenshots, your written log. The report creates an official record, which matters if you later pursue a protective order or a civil case. It also connects your situation to any other complaints against the same person.
FBI and IC3
If the extortion involves the internet, crosses state lines, or targets a business through ransomware, federal agencies have jurisdiction. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is the main intake point for cyber-enabled extortion and accepts online reports at ic3.gov.3IC3. Complaint Form – Internet Crime Complaint Center You can also contact your local FBI field office or call 1-800-CALL-FBI.
These cases are common. In 2024, IC3 received more than 86,000 extortion complaints with over $143 million in reported losses, and those numbers only count the people who reported.4IC3. 2024 IC3 Annual Report The penalties on the other side are real. Federal extortion under the Hobbs Act carries up to 20 years in prison when the conduct affects interstate commerce.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 US Code 1951 – Interference with Commerce by Threats or Violence Transmitting a threat across state lines to injure someone with intent to extort money also carries up to 20 years, and threatening to expose someone’s secrets to extract money is a separate federal offense punishable by up to two years.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 875 – Interstate Communications
If This Is Sextortion
Sextortion is one of the fastest-growing forms of extortion in the United States, and the FBI has flagged it as a particular threat to young people.1FBI. Sextortion The pattern is familiar: someone obtains or claims to have intimate images, then threatens to share them unless you pay or send more. Many offenders operate overseas and run the same scheme against dozens of victims at once.
Everything above still applies, but you have additional tools:
- StopNCII.org lets you create a digital fingerprint (hash) of intimate images on your own device without uploading the actual image. Participating social media platforms use that hash to detect and remove matching content. The image never leaves your device.
- Every major social media platform has a reporting process for nonconsensual intimate images. Direct platform reports often remove content faster than any legal process.
- If the victim is under 18, any intimate images are child sexual abuse material regardless of how they were created. Parents or the minor can report to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children through the CyberTipline at report.cybertip.org or at 1-800-843-5678.7NCMEC. CyberTipline
The shame sextortion creates is manufactured. The FBI’s message to victims is blunt: you are the victim of a crime, and the only person who should feel ashamed is the one committing it.1FBI. Sextortion
Protective Orders and Legal Help
If you know who the extorter is and they can be reached by the court system, a protective order (sometimes called a restraining order) adds another layer of protection. The type available depends on your state and your relationship to the person. Most states offer some form of order covering stalking, harassment, or threats of violence, even when the parties are strangers. You start the process at your local courthouse, and many courts have self-help centers or victim advocates to walk you through it. A judge can often issue a temporary emergency order the same day, with a full hearing scheduled within a few weeks. Violating the order is itself a crime, which gives police another reason to arrest someone who keeps threatening you.
An attorney who handles criminal defense or civil litigation can look at your situation and advise on options beyond the police report. This matters most when the extortion grows out of a workplace dispute, a business relationship, or conduct sitting in a gray area between hard negotiation and a criminal threat. The line turns on whether someone is threatening to expose information purely as leverage for money rather than pursuing a lawful claim. Victims can often sue for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and many states recognize a separate civil cause of action for victims of criminal conduct; a criminal conviction isn’t required before you file. Civil suits really only pay off when the extorter has identifiable assets or income, so suing an anonymous overseas scammer tends to produce a judgment no one can collect. An attorney can help you make that call early.
If the extortion involves ransomware, hacked accounts, or ongoing access to your systems, a cybersecurity professional can help you lock things down and figure out how the breach happened. Changing passwords alone often isn’t enough once an attacker is inside; a professional can check for persistent access, malware, and hidden forwarding rules that keep feeding information back out.