AURORA, Mo.—Kari Boettler could not comprehend what she found on her late son’s cellphone on Feb. 5, 2024. She was searching the metadata to determine why 16-year-old Evan had shot himself in their backyard that January.
Sitting on the sofa in the same living room in which Evan had just celebrated Christmas with his family, only feet from the spot where he died, Boettler tried to make sense of the explicit photos and threatening text messages she found on Evan’s smartphone.
Sexual exploration is a natural part of growing up. Curiosity, biology, and questions about love and romance have always driven teens to experiment. But today’s teens live life with instant access to information through smartphones and the internet.
According to Thorn, a California-based nonprofit that tracks teen online sexual activity, almost one-quarter of children aged 9 to 17 reported in a 2023 survey that sharing nude pictures with their peers was normal.
The explicit images and messages on Evan’s phone had been exchanged in the final hours of his life but had been missed during previous searches. What the police did find told them much about Evan’s life.
“[The police found] videos and pictures of hunting and fishing and soccer, meal prep, stuff like that,” Evan’s father, Brad Boettler, told The Epoch Times. “It wasn’t like he was out looking for inappropriate content or anything like that.”
Evan was a victim of “sextortion.” In sextortion, an online predator convinces his underage victim to exchange sexually explicit pictures or videos, known as child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
Once the predator has the CSAM, he uses it to extort money or more CSAM, or simply to harass the victim.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported that in 2021, its CyberTipline received roughly 62,000 reports of online enticement. By the end of 2023, that had increased by 300 percent to 186,800. By October 2024, that number was 456,000.
Gregory Kehoe is the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida. He said the growth in the number of sextortion cases and expansion into other forms of the crime match the growth of technology.
Kehoe said sextortion began mainly as a way for pedophiles to get CSAM for themselves and to trade with other predators.
Social media platforms and online gaming provide easy, anonymous access to children for the online predator, he said. The predator can assume whatever persona he needs to attract a victim.
The predator can present himself as a 16-year-old cheerleader who thinks that the victim is cute or a 12-year-old boy who shares similar interests. He can be a sympathetic adult willing to listen and provide a virtual shoulder for a confused child to cry on.
The predator needs only to build a little trust.
“Sometimes it happens quickly, sometimes it happens over a period of time,“ Kehoe told The Epoch Times. ”Once they get that [trust], then they start using that information, those pictures, to extort these people, these victims, to do any number of things.”
He said that once the predator has that trust, he continues to build a relationship with the victim. This can be a romantic relationship, a close friendship, or a sexual game.
Once the CSAM is sent, the relationship changes.
The case of a Bangladeshi man attending medical school in Malaysia is instructive of how sextortion scams work.
Zobaidul Amin was indicted by a grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska in July 2022. He was able to avoid extradition to the United States until March 3, 2026.
He has been on trial in Malaysia for 13 counts of possession and production of child pornography. That case is ongoing. According to the indictment, it is only a fraction of what Amin is accused of.
An indictment is a list of accusations. Amin is considered innocent unless he is convicted in court.
Amin is accused of using more than 80 false social media profiles to victimize 31 children between the ages of 11 and 17.
The images and videos he is accused of extorting from the children were reportedly placed into Dropbox folders.
According to the indictment, Amin allegedly required people who wanted photos or videos to contact the victims to extort more CSAM from them before he would provide them the link to their images.
When one victim asked to be released, Amin allegedly told her that he would never leave her alone and that he would “expose” her to others, again and again, if she did not continue to send him nude photos.
But Evan’s case, and that of Bryce Tate in West Virginia, appear to follow a different script. Rather than spending time on grooming, the predators appear to have used sex as the bait.
As in Evan’s case, Bryce’s phone metadata showed no evidence of sextortion until shortly before his death, his father, Adam Tate, said.
Tate said police told him that the first image was received at 4:38 p.m. on Nov. 6, 2025. Approximately three hours after Bryce received that first Snapchat message, he shot himself.
Tate said he has not been up to reading the messages on Bryce’s phone; the pain is too new. But police told him that the event started as a friendly conversation and ended as an intense attack on the 15-year-old.
In family photos, Bryce appears as an athletic young man with a shock of blond hair, a mischievous smile, and clear blue eyes. His dad said Bryce eschewed alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs, preferring to work out and hone his skills on the basketball court.
Tate said that for 12 days after Bryce’s death, no one had any idea why Bryce had suddenly ended his own life, until police finished examining the metadata from Bryce’s phone.
According to Tate, at about 4:38 p.m. that day, Bryce received the first text message while he was working out. It appeared to be from a 17-year-old girl who claimed to know some of Bryce’s friends, Tate said.
Soon after that, Bryce came home from the gym. He ate a supper of tacos and Spanish rice, then went outside to shoot some baskets. At about 6 p.m., Bryce showered, and that is when police believe that Bryce sent a nude photo to the people who had been texting him.
“At that point is when the script flips,” Tate told The Epoch Times.
The friendly, flirty, pretty girl character dropped, and the extortionist took over, police told Tate. They demanded $500 to keep the photo secret. When Bryce offered them his last $30, the extortionists began to berate him.
Tate said it was not just the substance of the messages that drove Bryce to take his own life. It was the sheer volume. He believes that more than one person was attacking Bryce. In a little more than an hour, Bryce received hundreds of messages.
The extortionists told him that they would ruin his life and that he should go ahead and kill himself since his life was over anyway. Shortly after 7 p.m., Bryce took his own life. His mother, who declined to be interviewed, found him in his dad’s “man cave.”
“The term suicide really gets under my skin,” Tate said. “These people are all murderers.”
Many have been critical of social media platforms for not doing enough to protect children. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has been a vocal critic of the companies he claims put profits ahead of children.
Hawley has requested information from Meta and Google as part of an investigation into what the companies are doing to address sextortion on their platforms. He said the companies are “not cooperative at all.”
Hawley and other critics say the platforms do not cooperate because they do not have to.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 provides limited federal immunity to social media platforms and their users from liability for information provided by third parties.
“The amount of child porn and child abuse material online is staggering,“ Hawley told The Epoch Times. ”They won’t take it off their platforms. I think they ought to be prosecuted. I think we ought to pass new legislation that makes them liable for knowingly having this content on their platform.”
Several lawsuits have been filed against social media companies.
On March 24, a jury in New Mexico found that Meta violated state law by failing to fully disclose risks posed to children by social media platforms. Meta owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez brought the case after adults were able to send CSAM to undercover agents posing as children.
Torrez said Meta violated state law because it knew of the potential danger but hid it from the public.
“What this case is about is one of the biggest tech companies in the world taking advantage of New Mexico teens,” New Mexico Chief Deputy Attorney General James Grayson said during his closing argument.
The court imposed a $375 million fine.
A Meta spokesperson declined to be interviewed but provided a statement outlining Meta’s efforts to combat sextortion.
According to Meta, it has shut down thousands of profiles linked to sextortion and other online scams.
This includes more than 60,000 accounts associated with sextortion rings in Nigeria—such as the one that victimized Evan Boettler—and on the Ivory Coast.
In addition, the company has introduced restricted accounts for teens aged 13 to 17. Those accounts have default restrictions and parental controls. One feature is a system that automatically pixelates any photo that appears to contain nudity.
Meta says it cooperates with law enforcement and has a department dedicated to rooting out and stopping illegal activity on its platforms. This includes its membership in the Tech Coalition.
The coalition includes Meta, Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Roblox, TikTok, Discord, Snap Inc., and others. Through the group’s Lantern program, companies share data related to child sexual exploitation they find that may show up on other platforms.
Meta points out that online predators are always looking for ways to get around security measures.
“Sextortion scammers often jump from platform to platform, so we share signals about sextortion activity with other tech companies ... so they can investigate and take action too—and we support law enforcement in investigating and prosecuting sextortion criminals,” the Meta statement reads.
Amin’s indictment describes his efforts to evade security measures. He allegedly had dozens of profiles deleted on various platforms. The indictment quotes Amin allegedly ordering a victim to help him stay online by opening a new Instagram account for him, after his device was banned.
Giving Strangers Access
Ultimately, those who deal with sextortion say effective prevention begins at home.Kehoe said handing a child a smartphone is tantamount to giving strangers unsupervised access to children.
“Well, you know, allowing these children to be on these various platforms talking to people is the functional equivalent,” he said. “It just is.”
Opal Singleton Hendershot is an author and speaker on online safety. She pointed out that in previous generations, children were formally educated on how to handle both technology and threats to their safety.
Whether it was dialing 911 for an emergency or knowing how to react when approached by a stranger, children were taught how to keep themselves safe. Similar programs should be developed for the rapidly changing digital world, she said.
She proposed a certification program that a child must complete before being allowed onto a social media platform. This would show that the child has been taught about responsible use of media.
“Maybe you put the certification number in when you sign up for the app,” she said.
Tate said he is spreading his son’s story to prevent future tragedies. He said he believes that saving other kids is a fitting tribute to his Bryce.
“I don’t want these cowards to have the power [of] writing the ending of my son’s story,” he said.
“I won’t allow them to write that ending.”
