Original subtitles

Are you all scamming now?

His name was Evan Butler. Have you ever heard of that, Kay?

A new word has hit the headlines.

Sextortion. Sextortion is the fastest growing scam affecting teenagers

Their aim, terrify children into handing over as much money as they can.

Reports from around the world have begun warning of a spike in sextortion scams,

now predominantly targeting teenage boys in towns in Europe and North America.

Towns like this one, Aurora, Missouri.

Hey guys, welcome back to the vlog. It's Evan here.

Oh, yeah, there's my sister being weird.

Say, Mom.

Say, hey, Mom.

Mom.

This video really shows his personality.

He was the kid that would wear anything.

He wasn't concerned about what everybody else was wearing. He was kind of his

own cat.

I tested this out here with the top water, and I caught it all by myself.

I'm so proud of myself.

He enjoyed the outdoors, hunting, fishing.

Tried all the sports.

When people talk about sextortion, they are talking about this attack through

social media.

And what really turns your stomach here is that the classic target is...

A lad of 14, 15, 16.

I don't come up a ton hard.

Oh, wow.

It's virtually untouched.

A lot of the stuff sitting around, like, these are things that would kind of

showcase.

who he was and we just haven't put them up everything's just kind of left

yeah

and at these awards that he was um yeah when he was when he was

little he was in a um little mr hound dog kind of a pageant uh for our local

you know they go on the parade and stuff like that but that was his only uh

trial at uh pageantry you got his Soccer award.

Defensive rookie of the year. Yeah, that was from his freshman year playing

soccer.

He liked the slide tackle quite a bit.

He was pretty slick at that.

You see the things and they bring back, you know, good memories.

But then at the same time, it reminds you of the law.

Yeah.

I'm so sorry.

Can you tell me what happened?

That evening, you know, on January 3rd, it replays in my head all the time.

It was... First day back after Christmas break.

And it was getting dark, and it was really cold.

Our understanding is that this person contacted him on Snapchat.

The user profile was a young girl, and Jenny T60 was the name.

He decided to take a risk, I guess, you know, being a teenage boy.

There was a photo that Evan had shared, and it said, I'm ready to ruin your life

unless you will comply with me.

And then it was just constant.

And he told them he didn't have any money, and then it was just message

message of, you know, demand.

They asked for his Facebook login. They asked for his Instagram login.

They asked for his address.

And he responded with, why are you going to kill me?

He was terrified.

He just had no idea why this person was doing this.

It was continual harassment.

It didn't give him any time to think, you know, it was nonstop.

And then they asked for his Instagram login.

And he said, I'm looking for it.

That was his last response.

From the first message was about an hour and a half, two hours.

We came in up to the house and we were at the driveway and I got a text message

and I looked at my phone and as I was reading the message,

we heard the gunshot.

Was it a goodbye message?

Yes. Yeah.

Saying that, you know. How much he loved us.

And that we were great parents and he was sorry for what he was doing to us

said, you know, I hope I see you in heaven. And that was that.

When they finally told us that night that he was gone, I just, it didn't make

any sense. Like, I don't understand how this could happen to our family.

It's an unexplainable feeling that you get when you know your kid's attacked

like that.

It's something that you'll live with for the rest of your life.

The Bettlers want to identify the person who blackmailed Evan, but Meta, who may

hold information that could help, won't release it without a court order.

Everything that I've read or looked at is that, you know, they're not going to

share any information without having those court documents to force it on

As a parent, does that feel frustrating?

It's infuriating.

For a company to basically stalemate and try to

protect the criminal is extremely frustrating.

It's been over a year since Evan died, and law enforcement in the US appear to

have made little progress.

But there are some clues as to who might be responsible for Evan's death.

At one point in the exchange, the scammer demanded Evan's Facebook login,

presumably so they could message all of his contacts.

When they logged into his account, they left a crucial piece of information, the

IP address that connected them to the network.

So all we have is the name of the Instagram account that targeted Evan and

IP address captured by him.

I want to know what type of person would target a child in such a brutal scam.

And looking at the IP address, it links back to multiple locations, all in

Nigeria.

But it most frequently links to the country's largest city, Lagos.

According to researchers, a large number of scammers come from West Africa.

Specifically, Nigeria.

Nigeria. Nigeria.

From these streets, criminals target children, trick, bully, blackmail them.

We're talking about gangs operating against individual teenagers.

Nigeria has become the leading country for cybercrime in Africa.

A career path becoming so popular there that those who do it now have a name.

They are...

Yahoo Boys.

I'm in Lagos to try and better understand how Yahoo Boys operates, and

with the small amount of information we have, we can get close to working out

which one targeted Evan.

I've enlisted the help of Professor Adedeji Oyunuga, a criminologist and

investigator who has been studying Yahoo Boys for over 20 years.

So this is a screenshot of what Meta sent to Evan once the scammer tried to

into his Facebook.

You can see that they were using an FB Lite on Infinix S5 Pro.

Yeah, Infinix was among the cheapest phones in Nigeria. So this one is a poor

young boy.

So he's probably working in a group where he has a leader telling him what

next.

Hustle kingdoms,

or scam centres, have started to appear across Nigeria.

with organized criminals now running large -scale operations targeting

en masse.

Nigerian authorities have successfully raided many of these centers, but no

journalist has ever filmed inside one.

I've been told about a hustle kingdom in Makoto, a floating settlement in Lagos,

and one of the poorest areas in the city.

They've agreed to let me inside their illegal hustle kingdom, but with strict

instructions. We do not reveal the specific location

Hi

ghost on tear

Can you tell me what an HK is?

What type of fraud do you do?

OK. And do all your boys do different types of scams or are all of them

specialising in one?

Are you scamming or are you just managing them?

OK. How much have you made so far?

In your bank account?

Right.

That's a lot of money.

Yeah. Is that kind of what you guys think? Is that what you think you are?

Can you introduce me

to your team?

Hi,

everyone.

Are you all busy at work?

As you're talking, I can hear a lot of messages going on. Are you all scamming

now? They're busy at it.

Have you heard of sex -daughter scams, otherwise known as BM?

Yeah, exactly.

What type of Yahoo boys do you think do blackmail scams?

Even amongst Yahoo boys like ghosts, sextortion is a cause of shame.

in part because of the consequences it can have.

Reports from around the world now indicate that since 2019, there has been

year -on -year increase in suicides related to sextortion.

After days of trying to find the sextortion scammer, I've made contact

man in his early 20s, going by the name... Ola.

He's been doing cybercrime since he was 14 and pivoted to sextortion in his late

teens.

Can you tell me a bit about that?

So at the moment you put female, American, United States.

Okay, but what about the profile picture?

It's just a normal -looking girl. Where do you get those from?

And

what

social media platforms are you using?

I guess young kids, though, use Snapchat mostly.

Are you targeting young kids?

Why do you target young boys?

So

you're

saying you target young boys because they're being more scared?

Yes.

OK, sounds pretty brutal, pretty ruthless.

When you find your targets, how do you know what to say to

them?

OK,

so there's like a format or text that you send them? Yes. Can I see?

I want to make

my pussy get squirt, just stand at the front of the mirror and

take a mirror snap, babe, holding your dick.

Okay, so it's quite explicit, the messages that you send them.

Yeah.

Breaking news video maker?

Yes. So you make it into a news headline?

Yes, that.

is like trying to harass me sexually by sending me his nude pictures, something

like this.

Oh, God.

This is the victim over here.

I will have edited that.

So by the time I would be like, if he refused to give me, let me say, $300,

I will post the picture to his work office or his school.

Once you complete the amount you agreed, you can tell them I'm not satisfied

with the amount you paid.

So I need to fill the amount again to tell them $4 ,000.

If you don't have the money in full, you can pay the money weekly.

Sounds like you're pretty ruthless. You carry on for a long period of time.

In many cases, that could ruin someone's life.

No, I don't feel bad.

Why?

Because I need the money.

I've been suffering for a lot of time, so I don't care.

Have you heard about the cases where kids are committing suicide?

How do you know, though?

I don't think so. I think they're scared.

But what if they can't pay? What if they don't have the money to do it?

To Ola, it's hard to believe that an American kid wouldn't have money.

If they say no, he assumes they're lying.

That mindset, I think, explains why some scammers feel little empathy for their

victim. To people like Ola... just being born in america or europe means you've

had an easy life so why feel sorry for them but i kind of think that a lot of

them don't realize they're talking to a real person at the end of the day and

what they're doing is having real life consequences it affects the person

they're talking to and it affects that person's family there's a ripple effect

and it makes me think about evan's case i wonder if the boy that targeted him

even knows that evan's dead Or was it just one of a hundred people he was

talking to that day?

Our only solid lead in tracking down Evan's blackmailer is the IP address

to them.

Its location traces back to several areas in Nigeria, but most frequently it

links here, to Lagos Island.

I'm hoping Professor Azadeji can help us use this IP address to pinpoint a more

specific location.

Lagos Island is, I would have said slum, but it's one of the most highly

concentrated areas of Lagos State.

It's not a place I'd like to come to because you have to be very smart to

survive on the island.

Why is it not a place you'd like to come to?

It's not really very safe.

OK.

So this is one of the locations that links to the IP address?

Yes, one of the locations.

So if the IP address shows up here, does that mean that he was here at this

specific point?

Not this specific point. It was here on the island, anywhere around here,

because the mask is just supplying the network, and there are masks everywhere.

There,

there, there, up there.

But the mask will determine where he is.

But, you know, it's 100 to 500 metres circumference.

100 to 500 metres.

So he could be... Anywhere here. Anywhere here, yeah.

It's going to be hard for us to find the guy.

It's going to be impossible for us to find the guy with just the IP address.

We need the phone number.

And once you have the phone number, you'll be able to get the exact

Exact location, yes.

OK.

The blackmailer's IP address traces back to Glow World.

Nigeria's second largest telecom provider.

By law, companies like Glowworld must keep user records for at least two years

in a bid to combat cybercrime, so they should have the information we need.

I reached out to them and they agreed to help, but only if Nigerian authorities

officially request the release of the information.

So I handed over everything I had on Evan Bettler to the Nigerian police, and

now... For the first time since his death, an official investigation is

here.

For the Bettlers, the confirmation of this open

investigation is the first significant update in over a year.

No, you can tell with Kerry.

Just we've waited for over a year's time to get some information like this and

to know that somebody is fighting for Evan.

Yeah, as I said, we've been thinking about you a lot, and I understand how

information is quite overwhelming, but yeah.

It's good.

I mean, it's a lead.

It's hopeful.

Because we've been just left hanging in no hope, kind of. So this gives us a

little bit of hope.

It's been such a long time for them. They've waited a whole year.

So hopefully something can be done.

As the weeks went on, our communications with the police in Glowwell made it

clear that things moved slowly in Nigeria.

Still, they assured us the case was active.

I can't help feeling that the investigations into sextortion crimes

painfully long time, especially compared to the rapid rate at which new young

Yahoo boys are turning to sextortion.

Ade is 20 years old and recently began sextorting victims in the West.

He's having trouble with a client and has arranged a meeting with a local

who has developed a ritual that he claims will help him.

I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

20 ,000.

That's all.

I'm sorry.

If you don't believe me, I'll kill you.

If you don't believe me, I'll kill you.

While they prepare the bird for Ade to eat, I want to know if what he's doing

here is a common practice.

How often do Yahoo boys come to you for money rituals?

Wow, that seems like a lot.

Now that that ritual's done, do you think that his client will pay him?

Doesn't look like he's enjoying it.

The ritual itself was disturbing.

But what struck me even more was how these Yahoo boys, like Ade, are taught

see themselves.

They're snakes, masters of camouflage, blending in until the moment they

That's exactly what happened to Evan.

His attacker hid behind a fake identity, slowly gaining his trust, until Evan

was manipulated into sending a nude photo.

These are predators that hunt on social media.

For Evan, the trap was set on Snapchat.

Another young sextortion scammer I've made contact with specialises in finding

victims on the app.

You look for rich guys, you don't look for poor guys because they will not be

able to give you anything.

This one doesn't have money.

Go on Snapchat, add him.

Once you add back, all your friends from Snapchat will show there.

Then I start to add all of them.

I send them a text.

And how many people are you targeting daily?

I have no limit.

No limit?

You don't stop?

So do you use Snapchat to make them feel safer for sending a nude because they

know it can't be screenshotted?

So Snapchat

helps you in a way?

It seems the very features

that Snapchat designed to supposedly make the platform safer for young people

are actually being exploited by these scammers to make their victims feel

But Temi also told me about other, more sophisticated methods they use to make

their victims feel safe when they want to go beyond messages and have a video

call.

Right, but their mouth wouldn't be moving.

It will be moving? Yeah. So are you using AI or deepfakes, or are you using

-recorded videos?

No pre -recorded. I just need the picture of the girl.

I've heard reports of Yahoo boys using AI in sextortion scams, but no one has

ever filmed it being used first -hand.

So what is this?

This is an AI cloning app, what it says.

I use this to talk to them.

Where did you get the picture of this woman from?

That is from Instagram.

From Instagram?

Yeah. You use Rachel to pretend that it's a woman?

Hey, baby.

How you doing?

Oh, wow.

I didn't expect it to be that realistic.

Well, if you want to be able to scam, you have to go multiple ways without any

mistakes.

And this is just the first phase.

You want to make video call.

Okay. Then you start virtual camera.

Let me call somebody.

Wow. He's not seeing a real face.

He's seeing the person on it.

Yeah.

How much does this app cost?

This app costs about 3 million in Naira.

OK. To be able to set everything up, 5 million.

So that's $3 ,500?

Yeah. That's expensive.

Yeah, yeah.

Can you use this on apps like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook?

Yeah. OK, so it's compatible with all of those different social media platforms.

Yeah. Having this is a very good opportunity to bag plenty of money.

Because some people actually believe what they see and what you see.

Imagine I'm texting you and the next thing, you do not request for video

I'm the one that requests for video call.

It makes it very believable.

Yeah.

So anything I see after that, you actually believe me.

From what I've seen in my time in Nigeria,

sextortion is growing in popularity amongst young yahoo boys like temi

everyone told me it would be hard to find a

yahoo boy who does sextortion but with each day i spend here i discover more

more the crime is clearly growing the fbi announced that the number of

sextortion cases reported to them have more than doubled in the last three

reaching a high of 55 ,000 in 2024.

At least 20 of these cases have ended in the same heartbreaking way as Evan

Butler's.

Companies like Snapchat and Meta are increasingly being put under pressure by

victims and lawmakers.

about the growing number of sextortion cases happening on their platform.

You affirm the testimony you're about to give before the committee will be the

truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.

Critics say platforms could take action, like making friends less private, but

they're unwilling to act because it would harm profits.

We are on the side of parents everywhere working hard to raise their kids.

I reached out to META to see if they would share additional information

to Evan's case with me and the Bettlers.

They declined, citing privacy concerns.

Being a parent is one of the hardest jobs in the world.

So we work hard to provide parents and teens support and controls to reduce

potential harm.

And it's important to me that our services are positive for everyone who

them.

Section 230, the old.

let them have that security and not being charged with anything.

So, yeah, it's very infuriating.

Section 230 states that companies like Meta and Snapchat shouldn't be treated

publishers and therefore aren't responsible for what they use as posts.

So Meta and Snapchat, when they sent the subpoenas at first, they just came back

with blanket information, the same information that we got when we

his user account.

Snapchat was not willing to really give anything.

Meta gave them a little bit more information than Snapchat did.

So you didn't actually get much information from them? No, not, you

timestamps, which were already on the messages anyway.

So releasing that information, I think they're...

they choose to be tight with it so as to not be held liable for anything.

Arturo Behar is a former senior staffer at Meta who worked on user safety at the

company before leaving in 2021.

I've spoken to over 40 parents who have lost children.

and they ask the companies for records.

It's a harrowing process.

META are demonstrating, we don't want you to know what happened to your child.

We don't take any responsibility for it, even though they are so responsible.

And so whilst you were there, were you aware of sextortion?

I cannot think of a single meaningful measure that was in place.

Can they not report it as spam?

So the spam button...

Back then, and I believe probably today, it's not connected to anything.

Oh. So... So where does it go?

The void.

Right. Yeah, there's this gadget called the useless machine, and you flick a

switch and a little hand comes out and pushes the switch back.

That's the report spam button.

OK, so it's not actually going to anyone at Meta? No.

They keep demonstrating that they don't want to know when kids are experiencing

harm.

They don't want other people to know when kids are experiencing harm because

they don't want to deal with it.

Is it that they don't care enough or is it that it's impossible to stop? Or is

it a money issue?

No, no, no. It's not a money issue and it's not impossible to stop.

As you know, the Yahoo! Yahoo! Boys operate from scripts.

It's disgraceful that there's not a classifier that looks at the chat and

notices the script and immediately protects and then goes and...

eradicates every account that's associated with it that's driving that

because that's what you can do when you work on these issues at scale if mark

zuckerberg woke up tomorrow morning and said under no circumstances do i want

any of this on instagram it would take three to six months for it to be

eradicated every death is preventable and shameful

While Meta wouldn't share additional information relating to Evan's case,

did tell me that the account that blackmailed Evan was flagged as fake by

in January of 2024, the same month that Evan took his own life, and the account

was subsequently removed.

However, they wouldn't specify when in January the account was detected as

or whether it was flagged before the account interacted with Evan.

We'll never know if they could have stopped it.

While the blackmail took place on Instagram, Evan was initially tricked

sending a nude image on Snapchat.

When we contacted Snapchat, they too refused to provide any details, citing

privacy concerns.

It seems the social media companies don't want to share information with

bereaved parents, journalists, or without a court -approved subpoena, even

enforcement.

All hopes of finding the man who caused Evan's death now rest on Glowworld.

Would they provide us with the phone number that had been used to target him?

I finally receive an update.

Even though they're supposed to keep user information for two years, they had

failed to do so in this case.

They blamed the type of IP address.

There was no phone number.

The trail's gone cold.

Hi guys, how are you?

Good, how are you?

Good, thank you. It's nice to see your faces.

You as well.

So the first thing is that after a lot of back and forth with Glow World,

they've actually told us that even though cybercrime law states they should

the information for two years, they no longer have the information which is

linking to the IP address. So we've been unable to get the phone number.

I was really hoping I would be able to give you some better information, and I

am sorry for that.

A little disheartening.

You know, my heart still says that the information is someplace to be able to

connect the number or the account together somehow.

Meta probably has that capability, but, you know, they're likely not going to

turn loose of it either.

I feel like the longer it is, like, the farther off it is, you know, as an

obtainable thing. You know, like, we just keep chasing after something that

farther and farther away.

Yeah. Yeah.

I appreciate everything you guys are doing, because without you, we wouldn't

even have that. And I feel like our local police chief did what he could to

to get things moving for us.

Just know with Metta and...

You know, the laws that really protect them, it makes it almost impossible.

Yeah. Thank you for all you guys are doing. We'll keep in touch.

Now, guys, I'm fishing with a spinnerbait. It's a little trailer. It's

windy, so I figured I would just try this out for a little bit.

He's probably pre -teen right there, and he's fishing an

open -face reel.

He picked it up and threw it just as well as anybody that I've seen.

From a young age, he really dreamed about being a professional fisherman.

He always was excited about fishing.

Who caught that? You or Dad? Me.

He didn't catch anything.

His smile, he had the greatest smile, and he was always happiest when showing

off his catches.

And that was kind of a start of his love for fishing when we went to Roaring

River.

Since I've been back from Nigeria, I find myself constantly thinking about

young men out there getting into sextortion, interacting with their

through screens.

They seem so detached, threatening to destroy lives for just a few hundred

dollars. The real cost, especially in cases like Evan's, is immeasurable.

Down this direction.

Haven't done this for a while.

When was the last time you came here?

Last time I was here was probably about a year and a half ago.

I couldn't even begin to put a number on the amount of hours.

that we spent, you know, in a boat or in a river,

sharing that time.

You know, even last night, getting stuff together, you stand in the garage,

which, you know, everything, like everything around has a

connection.

Sorry, it must be really hard for you coming here.

It is.

Just being at the water was a place that he loved.

He was an amazing kid.

It wasn't hard to parent him because it was in his nature to be a good person.

He loved people.

Loved the outdoors.

Loved his friends. Loved his family.

And I know that he loved me.

I couldn't even put into words how much I loved him.