Tell somebody’: Oneida County ICAC team pushes online safety

RHINELANDER – Speaking to a room of parents and children at the Oneida County Law Enforcement Center on Tuesday, Aug. 25, Det. Sgt. Chad Wanta held up his cellphone like a weapon.

“This is the new Trojan horse,” he told the crowd, “and it holds an unlimited amount of bad people.”

Wanta, Det. Sgt. Kelly Moermond and patrol officer Alyssa Knabenbauer, all members of the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) team, spent an hour and a half walking the audience through the mechanics of sextortion – a crime the department says is no longer rare in Oneida County.

The presentation, geared toward both parents and pre-teen and teen children, was billed as age-appropriate but candid. While they listened, families enjoyed free pizza courtesy of the local Pizza Ranch restaurant.

Above all else, the presenters stressed how fast the crime can turn deadly. In case after case cited during the presentation, victims died by suicide within hours – in some instances within 20 to 30 minutes – of a predator’s first threat. Wanta said predators deliberately compress the timeline, giving victims only minutes to pay or comply, so they don’t have time to think or reach out for help.

Throughout the presentation, Wanta repeatedly told the young people present to speak up immediately if they are approached by a bad actor while using a social media application or gaming site.

“You’re a victim of a crime. You’re not going to get in trouble,” he assured.

Living in a small town does not offer immunity from this new type of “stranger danger,” he added, noting the Sheriff’s Office was named 2021 ICAC Affiliate of the Year among thousands of agencies nationwide.

“People don’t think it’s here,” Wanta said. “It is here.”

The presentation came the same week California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a proposed settlement of up to $18 billion between Meta and a bipartisan coalition of 51 attorneys general, including Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, resolving a federal lawsuit that accused Facebook and Instagram of designing features that hook children and teens. As part of the deal, Meta agreed to build in daily time limits, block teen accounts overnight, ban certain filters and add stronger age-verification tools. The settlement still requires court approval.

Wanta referenced an earlier verdict in the same fight during his presentation: a Los Angeles jury in March found Meta and Google liable for $6 million in damages after ruling the companies’ platforms harmed a young user’s mental health through addictive design.

“$6 million sounds pretty huge, right? Not for those companies,” Wanta told the crowd. “That’s like six bucks to them.”

What is sextortion?

Wanta defined sextortion as a crime in which a predator threatens to distribute a victim’s private images unless the victim provides more images, sexual favors or money. He broke the crime into four categories:

• Financial – the most common form, mostly targeting boys, in which predators demand money after obtaining an explicit image.
• Exploitative – more common with girls, in which predators demand additional explicit content.
• Relational – a predator or former partner threatens to release consensual images to keep a victim in a relationship.
• Sadistic – the fastest-growing and most dangerous form, in which predators demand no money or images at all, instead pushing victims toward self-harm or suicide.

Wanta said predators typically build trust with a victim on a mainstream platform – Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook or a gaming site like Roblox – before pushing the conversation to a different app where there’s less oversight. Often they pretend to be someone age-appropriate and of the opposite gender.

“Kids, if that happens, don’t do it,” Wanta said. “Never ever go to a private chat message with someone that you don’t know who you’re talking to.”

National cases, local stakes

Presenters shared several cases in which sextortion led to a victim’s death within hours of first contact, including Jordan DeMay, a Michigan teen who died by suicide in March 2022 less than six hours after two brothers based in Nigeria threatened to release an explicit photo unless he paid $1,000. The brothers were later extradited and sentenced to 17 ½ years in federal prison, according to the presentation.

Presenters also referenced the case of Bradyn Bohn, a D.C. Everest High School student whose mother, Brittney Bird, has since become a vocal advocate for sextortion awareness following his death.

Wanta cited a USA Today count of 38 confirmed sextortion-related suicides nationwide as of last year, adding he believes the true number is higher because many past cases weren’t investigated as sextortion at the time.

Despite the national numbers, Wanta said no sextortion case in Oneida County is known to have resulted in a victim’s suicide, something he credited in part to the department’s outreach.

“We’ve also had people disclose incidents after our presentations,” he said. “We are making a difference.”

Online extremist groups target kids, too

Presenters briefly touched on online networks – most notably one known by the number “764” – that recruit and manipulate children into self-harm, violence and other extreme acts, sometimes for livestreamed content. Wanta said members of these groups often incorporate the number into usernames or profile handles.

Knabenbauer urged young people in the audience to treat any username containing “764” as an immediate red flag.

“If you’re playing video games or Minecraft or something, and you see a username with these three numbers in there, don’t talk to them,” she said. “Block them, report them, go into a different lobby.”

New laws, ongoing gaps

Presenters outlined recent legal changes aimed at combating the crime:

Wisconsin’s sexual extortion statute took effect in Dec.2025, giving prosecutors a charge specifically covering sextortion rather than relying on general extortion law.

A new state statute also criminalizes possession of AI-generated or “virtual” child sexual abuse material, closing a gap predators had used to argue digitally altered images didn’t qualify as illegal content.

The federal Take It Down Act, signed into law in May 2025, requires social media platforms to remove reported explicit images of a victim within 48 hours or face penalties.

Wanta was critical of Section 230, the federal law shielding online platforms from liability for content posted by users, saying legislation to amend it stalled in Congress last year. He said predators exploit weak content moderation on some platforms – Roblox in particular, which he said has more than 30 pending sextortion-related civil lawsuits from families nationwide.

AI deepfakes raise the stakes

Wanta said artificial intelligence has changed the threat landscape, since predators no longer need a victim to actually send an explicit photo. Using AI tools, he said, predators can take an ordinary photo – pulled from a social media account – and manipulate it to make it appear the person is nude.

“They don’t even need real pictures anymore,” Wanta said. “You can erase people out of the background, you can do all kinds of things with it. But when you have AI applications, it’s even better, right? It’s getting very scary.”

Wanta said most of the sextortion cases his office has handled locally involve exactly this tactic: predators lifting a victim’s face and body photos from social media, then digitally combining them with unrelated explicit images and screenshots of the victim’s friends list to make a fabricated “collage” – then threatening to send it to everyone the victim knows unless they pay.

Advice for parents: communicate, be aware, monitor

Wanta closed the presentation by boiling his advice down to three things parents can do.

Communicate. Wanta said parents need to break down barriers with their kids and keep an open line of communication, even if the conversation is uncomfortable. He and Moermond described a technique some families use: giving children a note card to place on the refrigerator that, if pulled down and handed to a parent, signals something is wrong and it’s time to talk – no matter the hour.

Be aware. Wanta urged parents to educate themselves on the platforms, slang and tactics predators use rather than assuming an app is safe because it’s popular. He also pointed parents to www.Thorn.org – the nonprofit Thorn, which builds technology to fight child sexual exploitation – as a resource.

Monitor. Wanta said parents can use monitoring apps to keep an eye on a child’s phone activity but cautioned against going overboard.

“It’s not a babysitter,” he said, adding that being too restrictive can push kids to hide things on purpose.

If a child is targeted, Wanta said the most important step is telling them not to comply with demands, to stop communicating with the predator, and – critically – not to delete any messages, images or accounts, since deleted material can hamper investigations.

“It’s tough to catch these people,” Wanta said. “It’s much easier to avoid it.”

The ICAC team also urged parents to have children write down their phone passwords, seal them in a signed envelope, and store them somewhere accessible.

Anyone with questions or concerns about a suspected sextortion case can contact the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office at -715-361-5100.