Lawmakers push bill to criminalize sextortion

WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - Two lawmakers on Capitol Hill are now making the push to criminalize teenage sextortion, an increasingly common form of cyber coercion.

Sen. Ashley Moody (R-FL) and Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) introduced a bill in Congress targeting sextortion cases called the Combating Online Predators Act.

Sextortion is a form of sexual exploitation when perpetrators threaten to distribute private or sensitive images unless victims comply with demands for additional sexual content, sexual favors, or money.

“There’s so many ways that they’ve done this and they trick them into providing this image, and then they threaten to use that, expose it publicly, to share it with with others,” said Sen. Moody. “And numerous, teens have taken their own lives when this has happened.”

The bill explicitly criminalizes intentional threats to distribute child sexual abuse material.

According to the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the FBI received nearly 55,000 reports of crimes related to sextortion and extortion in 2024, a 59 percent increase from the year before. And the agency noted that teenager boys between 14 and 17 are particularly vulnerable to it.

Both Senator Moody and Congresswoman Lee are former prosecutors who have prosecuted internet crimes that targeted children.

“Early in my career, I was a federal prosecutor in the Middle District of Florida and worked extensively on cases involving the online exploitation of children. So I understand just how prevalent and just how devastating this type of criminal behavior is,” said Rep. Lee.

And both of the lawmakers said they noticed how difficult it was prosecute sextortion crimes.

“We don’t have a statute that allows federal law enforcement officers to go after, specifically the intentional extortion of children using these images. And so you’re having to put together a patchwork of different crimes to try and make something stick,” said Sen. Moody.

The legislation passed unanimously in the House and now both lawmakers are pushing to get it through the Senate.

“What this statute does is make sure that federal prosecutors and federal law enforcement have a clearly criminalized, behavior that they can prosecute it, that they can investigate it and make sure that these people end up behind bars,” said Rep. Lee.