My wheels got turning about how common sextortion has become after reading about a local case in the federal court newsletter CourtWatch.
Journalists Seamus Hughes and Peter Beck flagged a federal sextortion case from Outagamie County in March that caught my eye. The Post-Crescent covered the case with a brief story in April.
Teenagers and young people spend so much time online, it stands to reason there would be more opportunities for this kind of crime. That led me to another question: Is anyone tracking the number of sextortion cases reported in Wisconsin?
Intern Astrid Code took the assignment and ran with it. She tracked down law enforcement officials with the state Department of Justice, the Brown County Sheriff’s Office and more. The DOJ tracks the number of sextortion cases, and it nearly tripled from 2024 to 2025.
‘The word is out’: Wisconsin families turn grief into action as sextortion cases rise
The number of sextortion cases in Wisconsin nearly tripled from 2024 to 2025. Families whose children died by suicide after being sextorted are not sitting on the sidelines: They’re speaking to schools, advocating for legislation to protect victims, and some are suing social media companies.
Those cases represent real people, and Wisconsin Watch is always looking for ways to explore solutions to the challenges our neighbors are going through. Several families whose children died by suicide after being sextorted have turned their grief into action: They publicly advocate for victim protections and educate students in northeast Wisconsin. Thank you to Jamie and Jared Weigelt and Jill Yindra for speaking to Astrid for the story.
And lastly, thanks to Hughes and Beck at CourtWatch. They spend a lot of time and money (records are not cheap) sifting through federal court dockets in a world where too few journalists have the expertise or time to do so. Our story started because of their important work.
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