Tuesday, 23 June, 2026
2 pm EDT

Sextortion: When AI meets extortion, it's children who pay the price

In partnership with

Why attend

Sextortion is one of the fastest-growing crimes affecting teenagers globally. International criminal gangs exploit children for financial gain, often with devastating consequences, including suicide. Preventing and detecting this crime requires coordination between social media platforms, financial institutions and law enforcement.

While media coverage has focused on individual cases, few have examined the scale, global sophistication, and the financial mechanics behind these networks, the role of AI in accelerating the threat, or what the financial industry can practically do to detect and disrupt sextortion-related money flows.

This webinar moves beyond awareness into detection, red flags, and coordinated response. It will equip financial crime professionals with the context they need to understand the threat and the specific financial indicators they need to act on it.

The key take-aways

A clear understanding of how sextortion operates end-to-end, including the financial flows that enable it

Insight into how AI and deepfake technologies are accelerating scale, speed, and sophistication of attacks

Practical red flags and indicators that financial institutions can use to detect sextortion-related transactions

Concrete steps for cross-sector collaboration to improve prevention, detection, and victim protection

The webinar panel

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Sharon Winkler, Advocate, Research Curator, and Speaker on Online Harms Prevention

Sharon Winkler is a leading advocate for youth online safety and the prevention of digital harms, with a particular focus on the real-world impact of social media and online platforms on young people and families. She is the founder and web editor of socialmediaharms.org, a widely referenced resource that curates over 350 peer-reviewed studies, books, and research documenting the effects of online environments on mental health, behaviour, and wellbeing.

A survivor parent, Sharon brings a deeply personal perspective to her work following the loss of her son, Alex, at the age of 17 after harmful online influences. Since then, she has been actively involved in national advocacy efforts, contributing to policy discussions and supporting initiatives aimed at strengthening protections for children online. She is a member of Parents for Safe Online Spaces and Fairplay’s Screen Time Action Network, and has participated in U.S. Senate engagements addressing Big Tech accountability and youth safety.

Prior to her advocacy work, Sharon served over three decades in the U.S. Navy as a senior healthcare executive, leading large-scale public-private healthcare programmes and coordinating complex federal initiatives across the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs. Her background in strategic planning, stakeholder coordination, and governance brings a unique and authoritative lens to discussions on risk, accountability, and systemic change.

As a moderator, Sharon combines lived experience, research depth, and policy insight to guide thoughtful, informed, and impactful conversations on one of the most urgent challenges facing society today.

Paul Raffile, Campaigner, Cybercrime Intelligence & Investigations Leader

Paul Raffile is a cybercrime researcher specializing in global and transnational organized crime. He has led digital investigations across government and corporate sectors, with a focus on emerging online threats. His recent research into financial sextortion syndicates has been featured in major outlets including NBC News, Bloomberg, BBC, and The New York Times. Paul's findings have contributed to key safety updates on leading social media platforms, helping to improve online protections for youth worldwide.

Silvija Krupena, Director, Financial Intelligence Unit | RedCompass Labs

Silvija is a certified financial crime expert with over 20 years of international experience across the financial sector. She leads the RedFlag Accelerator programme, the award-winning world's largest structured intelligence database of human trafficking, exploitation, and related financial crime typologies.
A recognised thought leader in anti-financial crime, Silvija advises international anti-financial crime initiatives and speaks globally on disrupting human trafficking, exploitation, and complex fraud. She specialises in translating intelligence into practical, operationally applicable tools for financial institutions, law enforcement, and cross-sector partners worldwide. Silvija’s work focuses on turning awareness into action, pushing for real change across the industry.

Join the Discussion

This webinar is in partnership with

REDCOMPASS

As payments accelerate, their use for causing harm multiplies. The RedCompass Labs RedFlag Accelerator is the gold standard of red flags for providers of payment services. We use these flags and a persona-oriented approach to provide investigation tools and algorithms that identify human crimes such as labor and sex trafficking, child sexual exploitation, elderly abuse, and fraud, occurring in payment providers’ data. We provide AML (Anti Money Laundering), Sanction and Fraud system integration, upgrades and tuning, using data analytics tools we have developed.

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