An alleged 'sextortion' blackmailer may have made as much as £2million by allegedly threatening to publish compromising photos and videos of boys.
Olamide Shanu, 33, will appear in court in London in May following an extradition request from the United States.
Shanu allegedly posed as a teenage girl online in an attempt to convince boys to send him sexually explicit material of themselves.
It is then alleged that Shanu would threaten to send the material to the victims' family, friends or even the media if they refused to pay him.
At least three British schoolchildren have committed suicide after being blackmailed over sexually compromising content.
An alleged victim reportedly set up a payment plan with Shanu, paying him £240 a week until the blackmailer received almost £8,000.
Shanu's cryptocurrency account is believed to have received more than 6,000 payments over a three-year period, leading researchers to believe the number of victims could be in the hundreds.
The National Crime Agency issued a chilling warning last week claiming children were being targeted in sex extortion scams.
Frighteningly, they said the number of cases involving children has soared in the past two years, reaching 890 in 2022. There has been more than one high-profile case in which a child in Britain committed suicide after being blackmailed.
Murray Dowey, 16, from Dunblane in Scotland, died in December 2023 after being blackmailed by an actor or actors with possible links to Nigeria, according to MailOnline.
Dinal De Alwis, also 16, took his own life after an extortionist threatened to post nude photos of the teenager on social media if he did not pay.
Dinal attended the £48,000-a-year Whitgift School in Croydon, south London, and was a talented rugby and footballer. He hoped to study at Cambridge after achieving straight A*s in all his GCSEs.
Dinal took his own life in October 2022, a matter of days after returning from a family trip to Mallorca during the autumn holidays.
He left his house at 2 a.m. and died about an hour later. The times reported that the extortionist was believed to be from Nigeria.
Olamide Shanu, a Nigerian national, is accused of playing a role in an international blackmail scheme. He was caught and arrested by police in Surrey in late 2023 and will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on May 28.
The alleged extortionist is also wanted in the US on charges including conspiracy to commit cyber stalking, interstate communications with intent to commit racketeering and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The US Secret Service has alleged that Shanu and other actors used fake online profiles with photos of attractive women to entice young boys to share explicit images of themselves.
The victims were threatened and blackmailed into making payments via cryptocurrency or gift cards.
The Samaritans are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
If you need an immediate answer, it's best to call them by phone. You can reach them by calling 116 123, emailing [email protected] or visiting www.samaritans.org.