The FBI and other organizations are teaching students the importance of internet safety after a man was arrested for sextorting almost 350 teenage girls last year.
Sextortion, which is when someone threatens to release private information or images on the internet to force someone to do something, is a growing problem as students frequently access the internet at younger and younger ages.
Michael Chansler, 26, plead guilty to multiple counts of child pornography production after police found hundreds of sexually explicit photos of teenage girls on his computer following a sextortion investigation. He was sent to prison for 105 years according to the FBI’s website.
Chansler would pose as a teenage boy online and get girls to send him sexual photos. Then he would threaten to send the photos to all of his victim’s friends if they didn’t comply with his demands for more photos. In all, Chansler sextorted nearly 350 girls from 26 states, Canada and the United Kingdom. About 250 of his victims have not been notified of his arrest.
The FBI is requesting the public’s help in locating Chansler’s victims so that, as Special Agent Larry Meyer said, “that this dark period of their lives is over.”
