Editor’s Note: This story contains descriptions of suicide. If you or someone you know is in crisis, help is available. Visit the National Crisis Line website or call or text 988 for immediate support.
John DeMay found his teenage son Jordan dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound early on a spring morning in 2022.
The most horrifying experience a parent can imagine was rendered all the more agonizing by a crushing sense of uncertainty.
“He was an all-American kid,” DeMay told Straight Arrow. “We live in a safe area, a safe community and he was popular.”
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Jordan didn’t seem depressed and had no history of mental health challenges. He was a talented athlete who earned good grades.
Why would a 17-year-old with his entire life ahead of him end it so suddenly?
“There weren’t any signs,” DeMay said.
All Jordan’s family had to go on at first were cryptic text messages he sent to loved ones in the early morning hours before his death.
Then his girlfriend went through her Instagram messages and found a collage of photos sent to her by a pair of Nigerian extortionists. Squarely in the center was an intimate picture Jordan had taken of himself hours before he died.
DeMay alerted the police who subpoenaed Instagram parent company Meta for a series of messages Jordan exchanged with the extortionists, who posed as a 19-year-old college student proposing an exchange of intimate photos. Jordan initially refused. But after some cajoling, he sent a single picture. Once they had it, the criminals threatened to forward the photo to his friends and family — unless he paid them $1,000.
He insisted he didn’t have that kind of money, but the extortionists were unmoved.
Jordan died six hours after the first message.
Why are teenagers increasingly targeted by online scammers?
His story may be indicative of an ongoing and — experts say — underreported problem festering on dating apps and social media platforms: Bad actors on the internet are increasingly targeting teenagers and young adults.
Individuals under the age of 29 lost almost $500 million to scams in 2025, a 20% jump from 2021, according to the Federal Trade Commission. The FBI recorded 13,168 criminal complaints involving minors in 2025, according to the bureau’s annual internet crime report. Previous crime reports do not include that statistic, but “recent trends indicate a serious rise in cybercrimes targeting minors, driven by sextortion, cyberbullying, and online grooming,” the 2025 report says.
“It doesn’t get a lot of press, but it happens more and more,” said David Meyer, a managing principal for the investment fraud law firm Meyer Wilson Werning.
READ MORE: Man believed Google’s AI chatbot was his wife. It told him to kill himself, lawsuit says
Young people, along with immigrants and seniors, were one of the groups the city of San Francisco focused on when it started its own anti-scam initiative this summer.
“Those are the groups that we think are being targeted the most or moving the most money,” said Amanda Kahn Fried, the city’s chief assistant treasurer.
The initiative offers free counseling to victims and sends out scam alerts.
“We do the banking for the city and county and we’ve seen a huge increase in fraud,” Kahn Fried told Straight Arrow.
Millennials and Gen Z make ‘a much broader set of targets’
Millennials and members of Gen Z may be more prone to online scams and fraud for a simple reason: They spend much of their time online.
“If you want to go for a whale, you go for an older person,” said John Wilson, a senior fellow of threat research at the cybersecurity firm Fortra. They have a lifetime of savings and “they tend to be less tech savvy.
“But with younger folks, they’re far more online,” he told Straight Arrow. “Everybody is on social media, everybody is on gaming apps. There’s a much broader set of targets.”
And younger generations who grew up in the digital age and venture onto social media as tweens are comfortable sharing personal information that can be leveraged by scammers, said Betsy Cooper, director of the Aspen Institute’s policy academy, which — among other things — holds workshops for aspiring policymakers who want to tackle scams and fraud.
“Older adults may not have as much of a digital record,” she told Straight Arrow.
It doesn’t help that social media companies have insinuated themselves so deeply in our daily lives that avoiding them is nearly impossible, said Harry Maugans, CEO of the online privacy company Privacy Bee.
Prevailing wisdom used to be “don’t use your real name online,” he told Straight Arrow. “Now I don’t know if that’s possible.”
The criminals who ensnared Jordan used his social media handles to their advantage. He had profiles on several sites and was connected to his friends and family.
That online presence is what makes members of Jordan’s generation particularly susceptible to fraud and extortion, according to experts.
How do cybercriminals manipulate victims on social media?
While Jordan’s story is tragically extreme, it fits a pattern. Bad actors reach out to victims through apps or social media sites and build a rapport before trying to bilk money.
Criminals can use information as simple as the intended victim’s location to start an online relationship, cybersecurity experts said.
Compounding the problem, young people may be overconfident in their ability to navigate online ecosystems. A Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) survey released in June found that 90% of Gen Z respondents — born between 1997 and 2012 — felt confident they can recognize a scam.
Only 30%, however, said they always verify requests for personal information, the survey found.
“That belief that this is a grandparent problem works in the criminals’ favor,” Meyer said.
Bad actors don’t immediately ask for money, he stressed. They build relationships and shield themselves behind a cloak of carefully curated authenticity.
“They make a connection through a direct message or a comment or a group chat,” Meyer said. An appeal for money comes after trust is built. An elaborate ecosystem created for fraud fosters believability.
“There’s customer support, balances and charts and it all looks absolutely legit,” he said.
Criminals adapt scams to their targets, said Jason Brown, director of customer advisory at the cybersecurity company iCounter. Romance scams target older people with little or no experience on dating apps, whereas get-rich-quick schemes target young people.
“When it comes to college students, a lot of them just don’t have emergency savings,” Brown told Straight Arrow. “They want the opportunity to make money easily.”
Is artificial intelligence making online scams harder to detect?
To be clear, scams are pervasive for all demographics. The GASA survey found that 82% of respondents encountered a scam in the previous year. The FTC recorded roughly $16 billion in fraud-related losses last year, a 25% increase from 2024 and the highest figure the commission has ever recorded.
Generative artificial intelligence may be making matters worse, said Cooper, from the Aspen Institute.
READ MORE: Can law enforcement catch up to AI scams?
An individual scammer could spend hours browsing a potential victim’s social media handles to craft a unique message for their target. Generative AI can do it in an instant.
“It’s easier to find information to tailor to a scam,” Cooper told Straight Arrow.
Suicide deaths linked to fraud and extortion are considered extremely rare, but DeMay believes those deaths are far more common than data suggests.
“The difference with Jordan’s case is that picture,” DeMay said of the photo collage.
Jordan wiped his phone before he died, making the collage sent to his girlfriend the only clue leading the authorities to his extortionists.
“Without that, we never would have known what happened,” DeMay said.
Who is responsible for protecting teenagers from online scammers?
Two Nigerian men were eventually extradited to the United States to stand trial for extorting Jordan and other teenage boys and sentenced to six months in prison.
DeMay said he has met with safety teams at social media companies and implored them to impose more safeguards.
Social media giants offload responsibility onto users by placing the onus on teens and parents to change safety and privacy settings to deter unwanted messages, DeMay said.
“We have to put the onus on the tech companies,” he said.
A Meta spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Parents play a crucial role in educating their children about the dangers of social media use, but the platforms themselves have largely abdicated their responsibility, DeMay said.
“We as parents are at the forefront,” he said. “But the tech companies are not making it easy for any of us.”
He added: “Parents should feel safe that these products are not maliciously victimizing young people.”
Round out your reading
- He built his own Flock-style camera to track police. The police didn’t like it.
- Trump’s apparent joke about letting Iran bomb LA and San Diego catches bipartisan condemnation.
- Grandparents are fighting for access to their grandchildren. Here’s what the law says.
- When the ‘victim’ is made with AI, child pornography cases get complicated.
- Fibermaxxing is trending. Here’s what the science says.
