More often, perpetrators use social media to coax one photograph from a victim, then use that to demand a continual supply. A State Department employee at the American Embassy in London was sentenced to more than four years in prison after threatening to put sexually explicit images of women onlinee.
Law enforcement agencies acknowledge the proliferation of sextortion, but it does not exist as a separate offense in federal or state law, nor does any government agency maintain data on it. No academic literature is available to educate the public or provide resources for victims. It is remote and anonymous. It involves high-level computer intelligence, and it gives sexual predators access to thousands of new potential victims, researchers say. And, Mr. Wittes said, it has not been addressed appropriately.

He said one of the most alarming things about such cases was the ability of perpetrators to scale up their assaults.

“It used to be that you couldn’t walk into a place and sexually assault a large number of people,” he said. With a computer, he said, “you can.”