{"id":41551,"date":"2025-11-22T11:03:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T11:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/41551\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T11:03:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T11:03:10","slug":"death-of-15-year-old-west-virginia-boy-leads-to-sextortion-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/41551\/","title":{"rendered":"Death of 15-year-old West Virginia boy leads to sextortion investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The death of a 15-year-old boy in West Virginia has sparked an investigation into an alleged\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/tag\/sextortion\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" data-absolute=\"true\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">sextortion<\/a>\u00a0scheme.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/KanawhaSheriff\/posts\/pfbid0zF7Q9yKyTAfZtdpeirXVn9J3fQz4zgMg8MM7KBjXY6i2M4k6TKBUsxeW6pDaT6bpl\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" data-absolute=\"true\">In a news release on Friday<\/a>, the Kanawha County Sheriff&#8217;s Office said the FBI field office in Pittsburgh is taking over the investigation into the death of Bryce Tate, a student at Nitro High School  who died from a self-inflicted gunshot on Nov. 6.<\/p>\n<p>      <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/default-2025-11-21t211722-055.png#.webp\" alt=\"default-2025-11-21t211722-055.png \" height=\"349\" width=\"620\" class=\" lazyload\"  loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                  The death of a 15-year-old boy in West Virginia has sparked an investigation into an alleged sextortion scheme.<\/p>\n<p>                (Photo Credit: Kanawha County Sheriff&#8217;s Office)<\/p>\n<p>Since his death, investigators said the boy may have been targeted in an online sextortion scheme. Evidence from the boy&#8217;s cell phone, according to the sheriff&#8217;s office, shows that an unknown person contacted the 15-year-old about three hours before his death, and the conversation continued until &#8220;just minutes&#8221; before he died.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Due to the interstate and digital nature of this case, the investigation has been adopted by the FBI Pittsburgh, where it remains active,&#8221; the news release said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>What is sextortion?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/video\/sextortion-cases-quintupled-over-last-5-years-doj-working-investigate\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" data-absolute=\"true\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">Authorities say sextortion<\/a> is a form of online exploitation where victims are pressured or manipulated into sending sensitive images to someone. That person, oftentimes, is utilizing a fake social media account and uses the photos to threaten the victim.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;These schemes often move quickly and are designed to overwhelm and panic young victims,&#8221; the sheriff&#8217;s office said on Friday.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/video\/surge-in-sextortion-cases-targeting-teen-boys\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" data-absolute=\"true\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">CBS News reviewed FBI records<\/a>, which found a spike in reports of sextortion since 2019 and a surge in cases targeting teen boys. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/sextortion-generative-ai-scam-elijah-heacock-take-it-down-act\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" data-absolute=\"true\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">said it received<\/a>\u00a0more than 500,000 reports of sextortion scams targeting minors in the last year.  <\/p>\n<p>\n        More from CBS News\n      <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The death of a 15-year-old boy in West Virginia has sparked an investigation into an alleged\u00a0sextortion\u00a0scheme.\u00a0 In a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74,24986,978],"class_list":{"0":"post-41551","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh","8":"tag-pittsburgh","9":"tag-pittsburgh-headlines","10":"tag-pittsburgh-news","11":"tag-sextortion","12":"tag-west-virginia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}