A Nigerian man, Olamide Shanu, will be arraigned in a court in the United Kingdom (UK) for allegedly threatening to publish compromising photos and videos of teenage boys.
The 33-year-old sextortion blackmailer may have earned as much as £2 million from his victims, according to the UK media.
Shanu is set to appear in court in London in May after an extradition request from the United States.
Reports revealed that Shanu allegedly posed online as a teenage girl, to try and persuade boys to send him sexually explicit material of themselves.
He would then threaten to send the material to the victims’ family, friends or even the media, if they refused to pay him whatever amount of money he demanded.
At least three UK schoolchildren have committed suicide as a result of being blackmailed over sexually compromising content.
One of the victims had set up a payment plan with Shanu, paying him £240 a week, until the blackmailer had received almost £8,000.
Daily Express reported that Shanu’s cryptocurrency account is believed to have received more than 6,000 payments over a three-year period, leading investigators to believe that the number of victims could be in the hundreds.
Recall that the Uk’s National Crime Agency published a worrisome announcement last week, claiming that children were being targeted in sexual extortion scams.
The NCA said the number of cases involving children has skyrocketed in the last two years, to 890 in 2022.
There has been more than one high-profile case of a child in the UK taking their own life after being blackmailed.