Nigerian criminal gangs have been engaging in sextortion scams by impersonating women on social media to blackmail teenage boys in the United Kingdom, the National Crime Agency said.

The NCA said the criminals, some of who also hail from fellow West African country Ivory Coast, use platforms like Snapchat and Instagram to trick the boys, as young as 14 years old, into sending sexual images.

The victims are later threatened that their pictures would be shared with families, friends and school unless they pay about £100, Sky News reported on Thursday.

The agency said that although data indicates that most victims of child sexual exploitation are female, 90 percent of online sextortion victims are boys between the ages of 14 and 17. It said that in some cases, victims died by suicide out of fear that the images would be shared online.

In an awareness campaign, Marie Smith, the NCA senior manager of child exploitation and online protection command, described the situation as “extremely disturbing” and gave the victims measures to undertake.

“Do not pay – stay calm. We can help. If you pay once, they will just demand more. Nothing is off the cards, and we hope to hold these criminals accountable,” Ms Smith advised.

Similarly, NCA director of threat leadership, Alex Murray, said the campaign aims to empower young boys and teach them how to spot the dangers posed by this crime and report it, adding that sextortion can have devastating consequences for victims.

“It supports them to understand that if it does happen, it is never their fault. It will also take the advantage away from the criminals responsible, whose only motivation is financial gain. Sadly, teenagers in the UK and around the world have taken their own lives because of ‘sextortion’, which has been a major factor behind launching this campaign,” said Mr Murray.

The agency’s CEOP safety centre, in 2024, recorded 380 sextortion reports, while the UK police, in the first five months of last year, recorded an average of 117 monthly reports involving under-18s.

Meanwhile, the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in the United States, in 2024, received over 28,000 sextortion reports globally, an increase from 26,718 in 2023.