Tolkkinen: Living in the country doesn’t protect kids from cyber crime

CLITHERALL, Minn. - Sunday night, I took away my 12-year-old’s smartphone.

He’d received it about a year ago from a relative who was getting a new one. It didn’t have cellphone service so there was no monthly charge. He played games on it and listened to music. It took me a while to realize that he could actually use it to go online.

After learning he’d set up accounts on TikTok, YouTube and Gmail, I went through his phone. One of the top video recommendations from YouTube was a clip of a girl with “pig,” “fat” and “ugly” written on her face, and even though she shakes her head, no, denying she is those things, it switches to a smug young man nodding, yes, she is. That’s for starters.

But primarily I don’t want him to become the victim of online bullying or sexual extortion. Even though we live 30 miles from the nearest stoplight, our internet devices bring the world to our doorstep, including crimes that target children.

Throughout 2024, the FBI has been warning of a “huge increase” in cases of children and teens being tricked into sending explicit images to con artists and then threatened with exposure unless they send more images, money or gift cards online. From October 2021 to March 2023, the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations said they received more than 13,000 reports of online financial sextortion of minors. There were at least 12,600 victims — primarily boys. The crimes reportedly led to at least 20 suicides.

In August alone, men from Ohio, Missouri, Oregon and Hawaii were each sentenced to decades in federal prison for tricking victims, including minors as young as 11. One of the crimes was against a minor in Minnesota’s Carver County.

In 2022, 17-year-old Jordan DeMay of Marquette, Mich., killed himself after thinking he was sending nude pictures of himself to a young woman, when it was really being sent to men in Nigeria, who were using the fake online name dani.robertts. They threatened to send the pictures to all of his social media contacts unless he paid them $1,000. He could pay only $300, so they threatened him again.

dani.robertts: “Goodbye”

dani.robertts: “Enjoy your miserable life”

Victim 1: “I’m kms rn” [”I’m kill myself right now”]

Victim 1: “Bc of you” [”Because of you”]

dani.robertts: “Good”

dani.robertts: “Or I’ll make you do it”

dani.robertts: “I swear to God”

DeMay shot himself that day. Described in his obituary as a high school athlete with a great smile who planned to attend college, he was just one of more than 100 victims of the Nigerians. Two of the men were extradited to the U.S. In September, they were sentenced to 17½ years in federal prison.

Imagine that. A young man near the Canadian border deceived by men a few years older and 6,000 miles away. We need to educate our children about what to do and what never to do online. We need to be blunt. We need to tell them what to do if they get caught in the situation, and that is to block the person and then tell a trusted adult.

Financial extortion is only part of the peril awaiting young internet users. Last March, the Washington Post reported on a group of youth that would romance minors into sending them nude pictures of themselves, then threaten to send the images to their classmates if they didn’t follow the group’s orders to film themselves doing terrible things, like cutting themselves or harming their pets.

In a statement after the sentencing of the Nigerian men, Mark Totten, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Michigan, warned parents, teenagers and everyone who uses a cellphone to be careful.

“These devices can connect you to criminal networks around the world,” he said.

Kudos to our law enforcement agencies for going after these predators. But we rural parents can’t be lulled into thinking a curfew and a country life are going to keep our kids safe.

Our country has its share of disagreements, but cyber crimes against children is one topic I know we all agree on. I could see parent groups like Moms for Liberty and whatever their liberal equivalent is helping to raise this issue to the forefront because it affects all kids across all geographic and political lines. At a time when about half of U.S. children get their first smartphone by age 11, it needs all the exposure it can get.

As you might expect, my son wasn’t happy with my decision. He especially didn’t want to lose access to a couple of games on his phone that he has played for months. So we decided that he can play those games three times a week. Otherwise, the phone stays with me. We may go retro with an MP3 player so he can listen to music.