An alleged sextortion blackmailer is believed to have made up to £2million by threatening to publish embarrassing photos and videos of children.
Olamide Shanu, 33, will appear in a London court later this month following an extradition request from the United States.
Shanu is accused of posing as a teenager online to persuade boys to send sexually explicit photographs.
He is alleged to have then threatened to send the compromising images to his victims’ families, friends and even the media if they refused to pay him.
At least three British schoolchildren have committed suicide after being blackmailed over sexually explicit images.
Olamide Shanu, 33, from Nigeria, is accused of posing as a teenager online to persuade children to send sexually explicit photos as part of an international scam.
Text messages sent between a blackmailer and his victim who believed he was talking to a beautiful woman before the scammer threatened to expose his private images.
One alleged victim set up a payment plan with Shanu, sending him £240 a week until he handed the blackmailer almost £8,000.
Shanu’s cryptocurrency account is believed to have received more than 6,000 payments in three years, leading investigators to estimate the number of victims was in the hundreds.
The National Crime Agency issued a stern warning last week, claiming schoolchildren were being targeted in sextortion scams.
They said the number of cases involving children has increased enormously in two years, up to 890 in 2022.
High-profile cases include Murray Dowey, 16, from Dunblane, Scotland, who died in December last year after being the target of a blackmail plot with possible links to Nigeria.
Dinal de Alwis, 16, from Sutton, south London, was also a victim of blackmail.
An investigation found in February that the private student had taken his own life in 2022 after a blackmailer threatened to send naked photos to all his followers on social media if he did not send them money.
The times reported that the threat is believed to come from Nigeria.
Parents Mark and Ros Dowey have spoken out about the cruel scam that claimed their son’s life.
Talented student Dinal de Alwis had hopes of studying at Cambridge before taking his own life after being blackmailed over sexually explicit photographs.
Shanu, of Nigerian origin, is accused of being involved in an international blackmail scam.
He was arrested in Surrey late last year and is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on May 28.
The alleged blackmailer is wanted in the United States on charges including conspiracy to commit cyberstalking, interstate communications with intent to commit extortion and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The US Secret Service has alleged that Shanu and other conspirators used fake and stolen online profiles with photographs of attractive women to target children via Instagram and other social media platforms.
They then persuaded their victims to send explicit images and videos of themselves and even appear naked in ‘live chat’ sessions while the conspirators posed as adult film actresses to hide their true identities.
Victims were threatened and blackmailed into making payments using gift cards or cryptocurrency.
Blackmailers also used stolen Snapchat accounts to target American victims.
One of them, who was contacted in May last year, believed he was chatting with Chloe Walterz, but the account had been stolen from a 16-year-old girl.
The boy handed over $1,000 before blocking the account.
Another American victim was also attacked by ‘Chloe’ on Instagram.
The boy believed he was talking to a young white woman and through Snapchat exchanged sexually explicit images.
‘Chloe’ then threatened to expose the photos to 200 of the boy’s friends and, under threat, paid the blackmailer $300 each Friday until he transferred a total of $10,000.
All payments were traced to an account on Binance, a popular cryptocurrency exchange, which was opened using Shanu’s passport as proof of identity along with an address in Lagos.
When the account was traced, it had been emptied of $2.6 million in bitcoins accumulated over the previous three years.
Luke Lack, a special agent with the Secret Service, wrote in the criminal complaint that the Binance account had received funds from victims of various frauds, including sextortion and romance scams.
Secret Service investigators allegedly linked the account to email addresses containing other identification documents belonging to Shanu and screenshots of messages showing her involvement in the sextortion scheme, including one under the name Chloe Walterz.
They also identified two other alleged victims.
For confidential support, call Samaritans on 116 123 or visit www.samaritans.org