PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Local police say criminals are stealing names and photos from students’ social media accounts to create profiles on sexually explicit websites.
In early September, two female students at Sherwood High School told School Resource Officer James Wolfer that this happened to them. Since then, more students have come forward reporting the same thing.
“My best guess is that the scammers found one of their profiles and it was open, took some photos and just started going through their follower list and finding their friends who also had profiles that weren’t set to private,” Wolfer said.
Officer Wolfer says these online predators try to lure people to websites often used by sex workers. They steal the teen’s name and photos from their Instagram account and create a copycat account. The copycat Instagram account has a link to sexually explicit websites such as OnlyFans or Fansly, where the user is promised sexual photos or videos in exchange for credit card information. However, those photos and videos either don’t exist or are stolen from pornographic websites.
“What these scammers are doing is they’re putting these together as quickly as they can because they’re getting taken down quickly, just like wack-a-mole. They’re just going to try and get people’s credit card information and move on to the next one,” he said.
Wolfer tells KOIN…
