Authored by Jennifer Cowan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Sexual extortion of children for profit is on the rise, Canada’s financial intelligence agency says, and a large portion of such activities are tied to organized crime.

This form of online coercion consists of threats to share sexual images or videos of a victim unless they provide the offenders with money or additional pictures, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) says in a newly published operational alert.

The federal agency released the alert this week as part of its efforts to combat the online sexual exploitation of children.

“Online child sexual exploitation is a disturbing global crime targeting children that continues to rise year after year, not only in the number of confirmed reports showing child sexual abuse images, but also in the severity of the images and videos,” Fintrac said in a press release.

“The motivation for sexually exploiting children varies, and while most perpetrators commit child sexual exploitation for sexual gratification and not financial gain, there has been an increase in financially motivated offending, including sexual extortion cases in recent years.”

FINTRAC described the 11-page report as a way to help businesses identify and report financial transactions associated with such crimes and is urging banks and businesses to be on the lookout for the patterns identified in the report that can point to extortion or other types of child sexual exploitation.

The updated alert is based on strategic intelligence released by the agency in December 2020, and it integrates lessons learned about such crimes since then.

FINTRAC’s investigation into transactions linked to online child sexual exploitation showed that nearly all suspected offenders were male. They occupied various professions or referred to themselves as retired, with the majority ranging in age from their late 20s to 60s.

There has also been an increase in online purchases of child sexual exploitation material using virtual currencies, typically by men in their late 20s to 30s, the agency said.

The Canadian Centre for Child Protection has reported that perpetrators often use social media platforms to impersonate a young person so they can establish a connection and lure the victim into sending a nude image or video,  the alert says. The offender will then blackmail the youth after receiving the photo or video, demanding money or items such as gift cards, or further images, in exchange for not distributing the content to family and friends or making it public.

Demands for money have been known to come from international organized criminal networks, FINTRAC said, citing sources consulted by Cybertip, a national tip line for reporting online sexual abuse of children.

“Cybertip further highlights that boys are often targets of financial sexual extortion, while girls are more often extorted for more images,” the alert said.

FINTRAC outlined a range of indicators that could suggest online child exploitation. Sexual extortion may involve the rapid depletion of an account through email money transfers, online gift card acquisitions, or funds transferred to peer-to-peer payment platforms, it said.

Some transaction notes have been known to contain references that the funds are being extorted from the senders, including mentions of explicit content or desperate phrases like “please stop” or “delete the video.”

Some countries attract sex offenders because of their economic conditions, insufficient laws to safeguard vulnerable individuals, or their relative proximity to Canada, the FINTRAC alert said. The jurisdictions identified as high-risk are the Philippines, Thailand, India, South Africa, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Cuba.

FINTRAC was founded in 2000 and began operations as Canada’s national financial intelligence agency and anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing regulator shortly after, becoming fully operational in 2001.

It looks for funds associated with money laundering by examining millions of data points annually from banks, insurance firms, securities traders, money service providers, real estate brokers, casinos, and various other entities. The agency then passes on the intelligence it gathers to the RCMP and other police services and security partners.

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.