The El Dorado Police Department and USD 490 partnered to raise awareness of and provide information about stopping financial sextortion by bringing in detectives from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to lead discussions on the topic. A Town Hall Meeting open to the general public was hosted at the Performing Arts Center on Sept. 24, 2025, and a similar presentation targeted to teens was presented at the middle school and high school on Sept. 25.
All three presentations were led by FBI Special Agent Brittany Bayles and Victim Specialist Erin Watterson out of the Kansas City Field Office and Wichita Resident Agency.
What is Sextortion?
When a predator uses threats or manipulation to coerce a minor into producing and sending sexually explicit images and then uses threats to demand something more. In financially motivated sextortion, the something more is money, cryptocurrency, gift cards, or other forms of payment.
What you should know
The majority of sextortion victims are teenage males. The child or teen is ALWAYS the victim in these cases. Between Oct. 2021 and Mar. 2023, there were over 13,000 cases of sextortion reported with over 12,600 of those cases resulting in known victims. More than 20 of those cases ended in the victim committing suicide. Unfortunately, many of the predators are outside of the United States, which makes prosecution more difficult.
Most financially motivated sextortion cases follow a known pattern:
1. The predator makes initial contact via online games or social media apps, often following other friends of the intended victim to provide a false sense of connection.
2. They will build trust with the victim by asking questions to get to know them, offering money, cheat codes for games, or a relationship to groom them into sending explicit photos or videos.
3. The victim sends explicit content, or in some cases, the predator will claim to already have explicit photos. Sometimes they will take a photo of the victim from online and Photoshop the victim’s face onto a photo of a nude body and use that as leverage.
4. The predator threatens to release the image or harm the victim, their family, or school if they do not send money immediately.
5. The predator continues to demand more images or money and the cycle continues.
What you can do to help keep your children safe
• Make sure all of their accounts are set to private.
• Encourage them to use strong passwords and remind them to never share accounts or passwords.
• Turn off their location settings for apps and photos.
• Remind them to turn off their webcam and to keep it covered when not using it.
• Remind them that anyone can pretend to be someone else. Just because they send you a photo does not mean it is really a photo of who you are talking to online.
• Encourage them to only “friend” or engage with people online that they know in real life.
• Don’t allow them to keep their phone by their bed.
• Tell them not to post photos or selfies that identify where they live or attend school.
• Tell them to never send inappropriate photos or videos.
• Tell them not to follow someone into a private chat or platform.
• Have open and honest communication with your children and let them know you are there to support and help them no matter what.
What to do if you or someone you know becomes a victim of sextortion
• Know that you are not at fault and you are not alone.
• Go to a trusted adult for help.
• Report the situation at tips.fbi.gov or 1-800-CALL-FBI.
• Report the predator’s account via the platform’s safety feature.
• Block the predator.
• Do NOT delete your profile or messages and do NOT send the explicit photos or videos to anyone else. The detectives will need access to this information for the investigation.
Other resources
• National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) report.cybertip.org or 1-800-THE-LOST
• NCMEC assistance taking down photos at takeitdown.ncmec.org
• Suicide hotline: 988