NCAA, FBI Partner to Combat Athlete Sextortion
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- NCAA and FBI announced a partnership Monday to educate college athletes on preventing sextortion, with FBI cyber division Section Chief Taushiana Bright saying NIL deals have expanded athletes' public-facing followings and increased their exposure to criminal targeting.
- The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center received more than 75,000 sextortion submissions in 2025, averaging nearly 3,000 complaints per day, compared to "a few thousand complaints per month" about 25 years ago, according to Bright.
- Former University of Michigan and Baltimore Ravens assistant coach Matt Weiss faces two dozen counts of hacking and identity theft in an ongoing federal case after allegedly stealing private videos and photos from more than 3,300 people — mostly female athletes — over roughly eight years.
- Jordan DeMay, a Marquette, Michigan high school football and basketball player, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 2022 after online scammers threatened to expose explicit photos of him unless he paid more than $1,000, according to a 2024 ESPN report cited in the article.
- FBI cyber expert Bright said sexually explicit images of athletes are mostly real rather than AI-generated, and perpetrators sometimes post a stock team photo to prove the explicit content depicts the same person.
- The partnership calls on coaches, athletic department leadership, and compliance staff to help educate athletes because they "may be the first trusted adults an athlete would turn to," and will give athletes access to law enforcement, reporting tools, victim services, and mental health treatment.
- The FBI identified three common tactics used by "sexual exploitation actors": targeting passwords and PINs, sending false messages claiming a social media account has been disabled, and phishing schemes impersonating social media customer support about a new login.
Why it matters: The FBI received 75,000 sextortion complaints in 2025 — up from thousands per month a generation ago — and the formal partnership makes athletic department staff a defined first line of defense, meaning coaches and compliance officers now have an explicit role in prevention, reporting, and connecting athletes to victim services rather than treating sextortion as a purely criminal matter outside the institution.
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