‘Sextortion’ ring targeting thousands of minors worldwide was just disrupted by the FBI, officials say

An FBI seal is displayed on a podium before a news conference at the field office in Portland, Ore., Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

It was news that Pauline Stuart thought might never come: The man believed to be responsible for the death of her teenage son years earlier is finally behind bars.

“It still seems a little unreal that it happened,” she told CNN on Thursday. “I kind of believed that it would never happen, but law enforcement never gave up.”

The suspect, Alfred Kassi, was recently arrested in his native country of Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa, more than 7,000 miles away from the Northern California home where Stuart’s 17-year-old son, Ryan Last, died by suicide in 2022.

US federal prosecutors say that Kassi and a group of three accomplices were all arrested in Côte d’Ivoire, charged for their alleged “role in an international ‘sextortion’ scheme that targeted thousands of victims, including minors, throughout the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Spain, and Italy.”

Because Côte d’Ivoire does not extradite its citizens to other countries, Kassi and his alleged accomplices will be prosecuted there under the nation’s cybercrime laws, US officials said. CNN is attempting to determine if the four individuals have legal representation.

Sextortion is a scheme where victims, including minors, are deceived into sending online perpetrators explicit images, and then blackmailed in exchange for money or the continued production of additional graphic content.

US law enforcement agencies have seen an explosion in complaints from victims, leading the FBI to ramp up a campaign to warn parents from coast to coast.

‘No child should have to be that scared’

Ryan Last received a message on a school night in February 2022 from someone he believed to be a girl.

Within hours, the 17-year-old, straight-A student and Boy Scout had died by suicide.

“Somebody reached out to him pretending to be a girl, and they started a conversation,” Stuart previously told CNN, fighting back tears as she described what happened to her son days after she and Ryan had finished visiting several colleges he was considering attending after high school.

The online conversation quickly grew intimate and then turned criminal.

The scammer – posing as a young girl – sent Ryan a nude photo and then asked Ryan to share an explicit image of himself in return. Immediately after Ryan shared an intimate photo of his own, the cybercriminal demanded $5,000, threatening to make the photo public and send it to Ryan’s family and friends.

The San Jose, California, teen told the cybercriminal he could not pay the full amount, and the demand was ultimately lowered to a fraction of the original figure – $150. But after paying the scammers from his college savings, Stuart said, “They kept demanding more and more and putting lots of continued pressure on him.”

At the time, Stuart knew none of what her son was experiencing. She learned the details after law enforcement investigators reconstructed the events leading up to his death.

She had said goodnight to Ryan at 10 p.m. and described him as her usually happy son. By 2 a.m., he had been scammed and taken his life. Ryan left behind a suicide note describing how embarrassed he was for himself and the family.

“He really, truly thought in that time that there wasn’t a way to get by if those pictures were actually posted online,” Stuart said. “His note showed he was absolutely terrified. No child should have to be that scared.”

In announcing the new arrests in the case, the Justice Department said: “At the time of his arrest, Kassi allegedly still had the sextortion messages he sent to (Ryan) in February 2022 on his phone.”

Medical experts say there’s a key reason why young males are especially vulnerable to sextortion-related scams.

“Teen brains are still developing,” said Dr. Scott Hadland, chief of adolescent medicine at Mass General for Children in Boston. “So when something catastrophic happens, like a personal picture is released to people online, it’s hard for them to look past that moment and understand that in the big scheme of things they’ll be able to get through this.”

Hadland said there are steps parents can take to help safeguard their kids from online harm.

“The most important thing that a parent should do with their teen is try to understand what they’re doing online,” Hadland said. “You want to know when they’re going online, who they’re interacting with, what platforms they’re using. Are they being approached by people that they don’t know, are they experiencing pressure to share information or photos?”

It’s critical, Hadland added, that parents specifically warn teens of scams like sextortion, without shaming them.

“You want to make it clear that they can talk to you if they have done something, or they feel like they’ve made a mistake,” he said.

Ryan’s mom agrees.

“You need to talk to your kids because we need to make them aware of it,” Stuart said.

The FBI was assisted in the investigation by San Jose police, the US State Department and the social media company Meta, which prosecutors said provided “critical information” that helped identify the suspects.

CNN’s Jason Kravarik contributed to this report