Humberside Police is raising awareness of sextortion following an increase in reports to their Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and Domestic Abuse and Safeguarding Investigation Team (DASIT).
Sextortion is a name given to a type of online blackmail. It’s when criminals threaten to share sexual pictures, videos, or information about you unless you pay money or do something else you don’t want to.
Since January 2026, the teams have received over 1000 reports of crimes of this nature including devices or accounts being hacked and people being coerced into sending money or gifts, demanding money or gifts in exchange for explicit photos, and deepfake or AI generated images of victims.
Detectives fear the actual number of cases is far higher as some victims may feel too embarrassed to report it or end up paying the demanded sum.
Sextortion refers to cyber-enabled crime where victims are manipulated into performing sexual or intimate acts, which are then recorded by the offenders. Those targeting them then threaten to make the footage public or share it with victims’ families unless they pay them.
In other instances, offenders threaten to mock-up intimate pictures of victims using photos taken from online.
More often than not, individuals do not recognise themselves as victims, and this just shows how anyone can be a victim. However, young people aged between 15 and 17, and adults aged between 30 and 40, and are married or in a relationship, are often most at risk.
Detective Inspector Steve Antrobus from CID said:
“Incidents of this kind are extremely distressing for victims. It is a cruel crime that can destroy lives, have devastating impact on victims, and make them feel deep shame and embarrassment.
“Crimes of this nature are often hidden, and the majority of suspects can be offending from behind their keyboard anywhere in the world. Making it extremely difficult to trace and make arrests.
“That doesn’t mean to say we can’t be proactive in our efforts to prevent crimes of this nature from happening in the first place though, and the most effective way of doing this is raising as much awareness as we can.
“While we will continue to investigate reports and work hard to bring offenders to justice, we want to do everything we can to find ways of preventing and reducing these types of crimes and providing even better support to victims.”
Criminals often target people through dating apps, social media, webcams, or pornography sites.
They may use a fake identity or befriend you online, and in some cases, we see that if a person you’ve just met online chats to you in a sexual way, or asks for sexual images, it might be an attempt to then use those images to make demands from you.
Detective Inspector Steve Antrobus added:
“There is often a common misconception that crimes of this nature only happen between young people, and that young people are targeted by those the same age, or significantly older, however, that is not the case.
“Sextortion has no age or gender, it can happen to anyone, but a large proportion of the cases we have seen across our area involve 86% of the victims being male, and 41% of all sextortion offences involve a victim aged between 8- and 17-years-old.”
Sextortion doesn’t just happen between strangers who may have met online, Humberside Police say they are also seeing individuals being targeted by people they know.
Detective Inspector Calley Murray from DASIT added:
“We also see individuals are targeted by their partners or ex partners, where sexual images, videos or intimate material are used to manipulate, coerce, control, or exploit their partner into complying with their demands.
“If this is happening to you, or you have concerns about someone else who may be experiencing domestic abuse, please report it to us.”
To find out more, and receive additional support, visit: Sextortion | Humberside Police
