Sexting & Sextortion Scams

It was a relaxed evening at home in Dunblane, near Stirling, a few days before the turn of the year. The Dowey family – Ros, Mark and their three sons – were watching television when talk turned to plans for the new year.

Murray, 16 years old and their middle boy, chatted about saving up for a holiday to Marbella he was planning with his friends that summer. At about half past nine, he went up to his bedroom. It was the last time his family saw him alive.

The next morning, Ros was preparing for a visit to friends in Glasgow. “I saw that Murray’s door was ajar with the light on,” she says. “I walked in and said ‘Are you up?’ and found him there.”

Mark was downstairs watching the football when he heard “this crazy, crazy screaming”. He shudders at the recollection. In the couple of hours since he had gone to bed, Muzz – as his family knew him – had taken his own life.


It took the police two weeks to gain access to Murray’s phone, and discover the truth – two weeks of “questioning every interaction”, says Ros, “trying to understand what we’d missed, how that happy boy who’d gone to bed that night was dead”.

Neither Murray himself, nor anyone close to him, had ever expressed any concerns about his mental health.

Police Scotland told the Doweys there was evidence that, on the night he died, Murray was targeted by criminals involved in financially motivated sexual extortion – commonly known as “sextortion”.

It is a crime that agencies across the UK, US and Australia confirm is rising sharply with teenage boys and young adult males typically the victims of loosely organised cyber-criminal gangs often based in west Africa or south-east Asia. The extortion formula is simple, with scripts and detailed “how-to” guides shared online, and often brutally effective.

“He was duped into thinking he was talking to a young girl,” Ros explains, “and she had an intimate picture with her. As soon as shared his own, it became very clear it wasn’t a young girl he was speaking to, it was criminals who immediately started to extort him, asking for card details and threatening to share his picture with all his contacts.”

The effect on Murray would have been catastrophic, says his mother. “He was very private and hated being the centre of attention.” She describes the “frenzied panic” he must have felt: “That’s why they target teenagers, because they don’t have the life experience to understand it will pass.”


Murray was clever and street-smart, says his dad, not glued to his phone, and, if anything, slightly dismissive of social media.

An open family, they had discussed the dangers of sharing photos and messaging strangers “and yet he still fell for it. It can happen to any child.”…….

https://www.theguardian.com/society...ctim-fight-for-justice?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other