A 17-year-old boy died by suicide hours after being scammed. The FBI says it’s a part of a troubling increase in ‘sextortion’ instances.

Within hours, the 17-year-old, straight-A scholar and Boy Scout had died by suicide.

"Somebody reached out to him pretending to be a lady, and so they started a conversation," his mother, Pauline Stuart, informed CNN, fighting again tears as she described what happened to her son days after she and Ryan had finished visiting a number of schools he was contemplating attending after graduating high school.

The web conversation quickly grew intimate, after which turned legal.

The scammer -- posing as a younger lady -- sent Ryan a nude photograph and then asked Ryan to share an explicit image of himself in return. Immediately after Ryan shared an intimate photo of his personal, the cybercriminal demanded $5,000, threatening to make the picture public and send it to Ryan's family and associates.

The San Jose, California, teen told the cybercriminal he couldn't pay the complete amount, and the demand was ultimately lowered to a fraction of the unique determine -- $150. But after paying the scammers from his school financial savings, Stuart mentioned, "They kept demanding increasingly and placing a lot of continued strain on him."

At the time, Stuart knew none of what her son was experiencing. She learned the small print after law enforcement investigators reconstructed the occasions leading as much as his dying.

She had stated goodnight to Ryan at 10 p.m., and described him as her usually blissful son. By 2 a.m., he had been scammed, and taken his life. Ryan left behind a suicide observe describing how embarrassed he was for himself and the household.

"He really, truly thought in that point that there wasn't a strategy to get by if those pictures have been actually posted online," Pauline said. "His note showed he was completely terrified. No baby should should be that scared."

Regulation enforcement calls the scam "sextortion," and investigators have seen an explosion in complaints from victims main the FBI to ramp up a campaign to warn dad and mom from coast to coast.

The bureau says there were over 18,000 sextortion-related complaints in 2021, with losses in extra of $13 million. The FBI says using baby pornography by criminals to lure suspects also constitutes a serious crime.

The investigation into Final's case is ongoing, Stuart and the FBI tell CNN.

"To be a prison that particularly targets youngsters -- it is one of the extra deeper violations of trust I believe in society," says FBI Supervisory Special Agent Dan Costin, who leads a group of investigators working to counter crimes against children.

Based on Costin, lots of the sextortion scams reported to the FBI are decided to be from criminals on the African continent and in Southeast Asia. Federal investigators are working with their law enforcement counterparts all over the world, Costin mentioned, to help establish and arrest perpetrators who're targeting children online.

One problem for the FBI: many victims of sextortion don't report the incidents to law enforcement.

"The embarrassment piece of this is probably one of the greater hurdles that the victims have to beat," said Costin. "It can be quite a bit, especially in that second."

However investigators urge victims to shortly contact legislation enforcement, both online or at their local FBI field workplace.

Medical experts say there's a key purpose why young males are especially vulnerable to sextortion-related scams.

"Teen brains are nonetheless creating," stated Dr. Scott Hadland, chief of adolescent drugs at Mass General in Boston. "So when something catastrophic happens, like a private picture is launched to people online, it's arduous for them to look past that moment and perceive that within the massive scheme of issues they will be capable to get via this."

Hadland mentioned there are steps mother and father can take to help safeguard their children from online harm.

"A very powerful factor that a dad or mum ought to do with their teen is try to perceive what they're doing on-line," she said. "You wish to know when they're going surfing, who they're interacting with, what platforms they're using. Are they being approached by those that they don't know, are they experiencing pressure to share info or pictures?"

Hadland said it's also crucial that parents particularly warn teenagers of scams like sextortion, without shaming them.

"You need to make it clear that they will discuss to you if they have performed something, or they really feel like they've made a mistake," he mentioned.

Ryan's mom agrees.

"You could discuss to your children because we need to make them conscious of it," Stuart mentioned.

Still grieving the loss of her son, she is channeling her family's ache into motion, and honoring Ryan by speaking out and telling his story. She hopes that doing so will help save lives.

"How could these folks take a look at themselves in the mirror knowing that $150 is more vital than a toddler's life?" she says. "There isn't any other phrase however 'evil' for me that they care rather more about cash than a toddler's life. I do not need anybody else to go through what we did."