NIGERIANS DETAINED OVER AN AUSTRALIAN TEENAGER’S’SEXTORTION’ DEATH.

Two men were arrested in Nigeria after allegedly attempting to extort an Australian teenager by threatening to post compromising images of him online, Australian police said Monday.

Detectives said the child committed suicide after being intimidated by the accused in the alleged “sextortion” fraud.

According to Australian authorities, the males who had been conversing to the adolescent online threatened to disclose “personal photos of the boy” if he did not pay them Aus$500 (US$330).

Sextortion is a growing type of cybercrime in which a scammer, frequently posing as an online love interest, persuades an unsuspecting victim to send them sexual photographs.

They then threaten to release the photographs unless the victim pays up.

Police, working with officials in South Africa and Nigeria, said they had tracked the two men down to “a slum in Nigeria”.

Local authorities “have the power to prosecute for Australian-based offences” under Nigerian law, they noted.

“Sextortion of children is a borderless crime, as these arrests demonstrate,” stated Australian Federal Police Commander Helen Schneider.