75,000 sextortion reports, and where the money actually is
The FBI received more than 75,000 sextortion submissions in 2025 and referred over 5,700 involving minors to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Its age breakdown shows the pattern most coverage misses: people in their twenties file by far the most reports, while people aged 60 and over lose more than twice as much money as any other group.
- Year
- 2025
- Where
- United States
- Outcome
- Ongoing
- Reported loss
- $44.2 million
- Victims
- 64,283
- Schemes
- Sextortion
- Last reviewed
- 2026-09-06
The facts, as recorded
- IC3 received more than 75,000 submissions regarding sextortion in 2025.
- More than 5,700 submissions involving minors were referred to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
- By age: under 20 — 11,316 reports, $1,297,653 in adjusted loss.
- 20 to 29 — 22,061 reports, $7,282,686. The largest single group by volume.
- 30 to 39 — 11,855 reports, $8,063,178.
- 40 to 49 — 7,791 reports, $6,507,936.
- 50 to 59 — 5,139 reports, $6,186,794.
- 60 and over — 6,121 reports, $14,894,547. Roughly a quarter of the reports of the 20-29 group, and more than twice the losses.
- The wider IC3 Extortion category grew from 48,223 complaints in 2023 to 89,129 in 2025.
Why this case matters
The age table upends the usual framing of this crime, and it does so in two directions at once.
By volume, sextortion is overwhelmingly a young adult’s problem. People aged 20 to 29 filed 22,061 reports — nearly twice the next group, and almost twice the number filed by people under 20.
By money, it is an older person’s problem. People aged 60 and over filed 6,121 reports, roughly a quarter of the 20-29 group’s volume, and lost $14.9 million — more than twice as much as any other age band. Their average loss is roughly ten times that of the 20-29 group.
Two different crimes under one name
The divergence is not a statistical oddity; it reflects two distinct offences that share a label.
For younger victims, the common form is fast and high-volume: contact through a social platform, an exchange of images, an immediate demand. Amounts demanded are typically small — a few hundred dollars — because the operator is working at scale and speed matters more than size.
For older victims, sextortion is more often one component of a longer manipulation, sometimes attached to a relationship built over weeks. Demands are larger and repeated, and the victim has more to lose and more capacity to pay.
What the figures cannot show
Sextortion is the most under-reported category on this site, for reasons that need no explanation. The 75,000 submissions are the people who came forward.
The reported loss figures also do not capture the actual harm. The FBI’s own reporting connects financially motivated sextortion of minors to suicides. A dollar column cannot hold that, and it should not be read as if it could.
What it tells you about the scheme
Two things are worth taking from this, and neither is about spotting a scam.
The first: paying does not end it, and the loss figures across every age band represent people who paid and were asked again.
The second: the volume is concentrated among young adults, which means the population most likely to encounter this is also the one least likely to tell a parent, a partner or the police. The single most useful intervention is making it possible to say so — which is why the advice on the sextortion page begins with telling someone rather than with anything technical.
Sources
- 2025 Internet Crime Report. FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: The 75,000 submission figure, the NCMEC referrals, the complete age and loss table, and the Extortion category trend.