If you are being blackmailed, do not pay, do not delete anything, and do not keep it to yourself. Save every message and file the person has sent you, then report the crime to your local police and to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov.1Internet Crime Complaint Center. IC3 Home Page Those three moves — refuse, preserve, report — are what put you in the strongest legal position and give investigators something to work with.
Don’t Pay, and Don’t Comply
The urge to make it stop by handing over money is powerful, and it is the wrong instinct. The FBI’s guidance is direct: cooperating with the blackmailer rarely ends the harassment.2Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Financially Motivated Sextortion Threat Once you pay, you have shown you will pay. The demands usually continue or grow.
Payment can create its own problems. If the person is in a sanctioned country, moving money to them can draw regulatory scrutiny. If they are part of an organized network, your money funds more of the same. Cryptocurrency and wire transfers are, in practice, unrecoverable.
The same logic covers non-monetary demands. If the blackmailer is pressuring you for more photos, access to an account, or a favor, giving in only hands them more leverage. Every act of compliance becomes a new tool against you.
Save Everything Before You Block, Delete, or Reply
Evidence is what turns your situation from a private nightmare into a prosecutable crime. Before you close an account, block a number, or send an angry reply, preserve what you have.
Screenshot every message, email, direct message, and voicemail. Screenshots alone can be challenged in court as incomplete or altered, so save the originals too whenever you can. Most phones will let you export full text conversations. Email clients let you download raw message files that keep the metadata — timestamps, IP addresses, sender information — that can help investigators show when a threat was sent and, sometimes, where it came from.
Back the files up in two places. A cloud account plus an external drive gives you redundancy if one copy is lost. Keep the files in date order. Don’t crop, edit, or annotate originals. Write a short log of what each file is, when you saved it, and how the original reached you. That record protects the chain of custody, meaning you can later show a court the evidence has not been tampered with since you received it.
Do not delete your social media account or the conversation thread, even if you want the whole thing gone. The FBI specifically advises keeping profiles and messages intact because they may help investigators.2Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Financially Motivated Sextortion Threat Platforms hold server-side data that law enforcement can subpoena, but only while the account still exists.
Report the Crime
Many victims hesitate because the material the blackmailer is threatening to expose is embarrassing. That hesitation is what the blackmailer is counting on. Officers who handle these cases see them constantly, and the content of the threat matters far less to them than the crime being committed against you.
Local Police
Start with your local police department. Bring organized copies of your evidence, a written timeline, and a clear description of what the blackmailer has demanded. Some departments have specialized cybercrime or economic crime units better equipped for digital extortion; ask whether your case should be referred to one. Get the police report number before you leave. You will need it for protective orders and any later legal steps.
The FBI’s IC3
Nearly all online blackmail crosses state lines, which means federal law applies. File a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov, even if you are not sure your case qualifies.1Internet Crime Complaint Center. IC3 Home Page In 2024 the center received over 86,000 extortion complaints totaling more than $143 million in losses, so the volume tells you the FBI treats these as priority cases rather than nuisance reports.3Internet Crime Complaint Center. 2024 IC3 Annual Report
The Platform
Report the blackmailer’s account through whatever service they used to contact you. Major social media companies, messaging apps, and email providers all have abuse tools. A platform report can get the account suspended, which disrupts the blackmailer’s ability to follow through. This step adds to, but does not replace, your report to law enforcement.
If the Threat Involves Intimate Images
Sextortion — someone threatening to share intimate photos or videos unless you pay or comply — has grown sharply. IC3 recorded nearly 55,000 sextortion complaints in 2024, a 59 percent jump from the year before, with victims across every age group.3Internet Crime Complaint Center. 2024 IC3 Annual Report Specific tools exist for this situation.
If You Are Under 18
NCMEC’s Take It Down is a free service that helps remove explicit images of minors from the internet. The tool creates a unique digital fingerprint, called a hash, of the image on your own device. Only that hash is shared with participating platforms, which then scan for matches and remove the content. The image itself never leaves your device, and no one at NCMEC sees it.4National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Take It Down You can also report to NCMEC’s CyberTipline at report.cybertip.org, the centralized U.S. mechanism for reporting suspected online child sexual exploitation.5National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Behind the Scenes: How NCMEC Identified New Sextortion Crisis
If You Are 18 or Older
StopNCII.org runs a similar hash-based tool for adults. You choose the intimate image on your device, the tool generates the fingerprint, and the fingerprint goes to participating tech platforms so they can detect and take down matching content. As with Take It Down, no image is uploaded or viewed.6StopNCII. Stop Non-Consensual Intimate Image Abuse Both tools only reach participating platforms, so they will not catch everything, but they meaningfully cut the blackmailer’s ability to follow through.
Once you have preserved evidence and filed your reports, block the blackmailer. The FBI recommends blocking contact and reporting the account through the platform’s safety features.2Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Financially Motivated Sextortion Threat Continued back-and-forth only gives them more openings.
Ask a Court for a Protective Order
Investigations take time. A protective order gives you a legal barrier in the meantime. You file a petition with the court describing the blackmail, the threats, and why you need protection, and you bring your evidence with you. Judges routinely grant temporary orders on an expedited basis, and a temporary order usually takes effect immediately and lasts until both sides can be heard.
Modern protective orders often reach electronic contact. Courts treat social media messages, comments, tags, and even content posted where the protected person is meant to see it as forms of contact that can violate the order. Violating a protective order is a separate criminal offense, so a blackmailer who ignores it stacks new charges on top of the extortion case.
An attorney can help draft the petition so it covers the ways the blackmailer has actually been reaching you, including alternate accounts, third-party messengers, and anonymous channels.
What the Blackmailer Is Actually Risking
Knowing the exposure your blackmailer faces can steady you while you go through these steps.
The statute most people find when they search “blackmail,” 18 U.S.C. § 873, is narrower than it sounds. It covers demanding money in exchange for not reporting a federal offense, and carries up to one year in prison.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 873 – Blackmail The statute that catches most modern blackmail is 18 U.S.C. § 875, which covers threatening communications sent across state lines or internationally. Threats to reputation or accusations of a crime made to extort money carry up to two years; threats of physical harm carry up to 20.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 875 – Interstate Communications Because online communication crosses state lines almost by default, § 875 reaches most digital blackmail.
The Hobbs Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1951, covers extortion affecting interstate commerce and also carries up to 20 years.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1951 – Interference With Commerce by Threats or Violence When the extortion involves hacked data or threats to damage computer systems, 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(7) applies, with a first offense reaching five years and a repeat conviction under the same statute reaching ten.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1030 – Fraud and Related Activity in Connection With Computers
Every state also criminalizes extortion, though statutes, classifications, and penalties differ. Depending on the jurisdiction, extortion can be charged as a low-level felony carrying a year or two, up to a high-level felony carrying 15 to 20 years. A few states have no standalone extortion statute and charge the conduct as a form of theft, with penalties tied to the dollar amount involved.
Recovering What You Lost
Criminal prosecution punishes the offender. It can also return money directly to you. Under federal law, a court must order a convicted defendant to pay restitution for property losses, income the victim lost because of the offense, and expenses tied to the investigation and prosecution, including child care, transportation, and lost wages from attending proceedings.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3663A – Mandatory Restitution to Victims of Certain Crimes If you paid the blackmailer before contacting law enforcement, or spent money on cybersecurity help, legal fees, or relocation, restitution can reach those costs.
You can also sue in civil court. A civil case runs independently of the criminal one, and pursuing prosecution does not stop you from filing your own suit. Compensatory damages can cover payments to the blackmailer, cybersecurity costs, legal fees, therapy, and lost income. You can seek damages for emotional distress, though the extent of non-economic harm usually needs to be documented through therapist records or testimony about how the blackmail affected your daily life. In particularly egregious cases, a court may award punitive damages meant to punish the conduct and deter others.
One tax note worth knowing before you settle: emotional distress damages that are not tied to a physical injury are generally taxable as income, with a limited exception for amounts that reimburse medical expenses related to that distress.12Internal Revenue Service. Tax Implications of Settlements and Judgments A tax professional can tell you the after-tax value of any recovery before you agree to it.
Weigh collection realistically. A judgment is only worth what the defendant can pay. If the blackmailer is overseas, anonymous, or has no assets, the emotional and financial cost of a civil suit may not be worth what you would recover.
Get a Lawyer, and Get Support
An attorney experienced in extortion and cybercrime can move the criminal and civil tracks in parallel, help you organize evidence for law enforcement, draft the protective order petition, and tell you honestly whether a civil suit is worth filing. Many offer free initial consultations in these cases, and victim advocacy organizations often keep referral lists.
Blackmail creates a sustained state of fear and shame that does not end the moment you file a police report. A counselor who works with victims of exploitation can help you process what happened. Many communities also have victim advocacy organizations offering free counseling, crisis hotlines, and hands-on help navigating the legal system. You do not have to work through this alone, and the people you reach out to have seen this before.