Stephens flew all the way from the UK to find him. What he found was shocking about his online sextortionist.

With the help of cyber-investigators, he traced a fake account back to a small town outside Ibadan, Oyo State. The trail led him to a rundown barber shop and a young man with a smartphone, and a disturbing sense of detachment.

British musician, Jordan Stephens travelled over 3,000 miles from the UK to Nigeria to confront the people behind a growing wave of online sextortion, what startled him wasn’t their denial. It was that they were doing it all for the money and where not bothered the people they were hurting.

For the Yahoo boys, they were hustling for their ‘daily 2k’.

Stephens’ trip is at the heart of his new Channel 4 documentary ‘Untold: Hunting My Sextortion Scammer’, which premiered this week, and it explores a deeply uncomfortable but increasingly common crime: young men, particularly teenage boys, being coerced into sending explicit photos or videos, then blackmailed for money. The scammers are usually faceless — hiding behind fake social media accounts and seductive messages. But Stephens made it personal. He went looking for them. And he found them in a dusty town near Ibadan.

This story isn’t just about exposure. It’s about visibility. And in a crime that thrives on shame, silence, and anonymity, the power of discovery cannot be overstated.

Sextortion is rising fast, particularly in the UK and US. According to the UK’s National Crime Agency, over 110 child sextortion cases are reported every month, and that’s likely an undercount. The majority of victims are teenage boys, and the scams follow a chillingly scripted path. A fake Instagram or Snapchat account, usually appearing to be a young woman, starts a flirtatious exchange. Within 20 minutes, a request for an intimate photo is made. Once sent, the tone flips. The threats begin. “Send money or we send this to your friends, your family, your school.”

Stephens, who’s become an outspoken advocate for men’s mental health through his #IAMWHOLE campaign and his new book Avoidance, Drugs, Heartbreak and Dogs, wanted to know who was behind it and not just from afar, but face to face.

With the help of cyber-investigators, he traced a fake account back to a small town outside Ibadan, Oyo State. The trail led him to a rundown barber shop and a young man with a smartphone, and a disturbing sense of detachment.

One scammer, still in his early twenties, admitted he was targeting a 15-year-old British boy at that very moment. Another said, bluntly, “I just want my money. I don’t give a f*** about what happens.” Neither showed much guilt. Their justification? Poverty. One was using the proceeds to pay for university, another to make rent, a year’s worth covered in a week of successful blackmail. His other job as a caterer earned about 25,000 naira a month.

“I wanted to look them in the eyes,” Stephens said. “To ask if they really understood the damage they were doing.”

The damage Is real, and in some cases, fatal. In the UK and US, dozens of suicides have been linked to sextortion — including 16-year-old Murray Dowey from Scotland, who was tricked into sharing intimate photos with someone he thought was a teenage girl. His family features in the documentary. They want people to understand how fast and how devastating these scams can be.

But why is this happening in places like Nigeria?

Stephens doesn’t pretend to have a full answer, but he points to a mix of digital access, economic hardship, and criminal networks.

There’s also a dark irony at play: online fraud has made some streets safer. “People told me petty crime has gone down,” he said. “Because more people are doing crime from their phones.”

Yet even as he acknowledged the poverty-driven motivations of some scammers, Stephens was clear: the consequences are too severe to excuse. “This is not some harmless hustle. This is mental and emotional warfare on kids.”

And that’s what makes finding the scammers so important. When a crime feels invisible, it becomes easier to ignore. Stephens’ journey — uncomfortable, complicated, and at times surreal — rips the mask off. It turns abstract danger into human faces, and gives victims something powerful: the knowledge that they are not alone, and that someone, somewhere, is trying to fight back.

Stephens is also unflinching in his critique of social media platforms. “They could absolutely be doing more,” he said. “Why are we still letting people create anonymous accounts without ID? This would not be as easy if there were real checks in place.”

So what now?

Education, he argues. Not just about online safety, but about emotional awareness, especially for boys. “Sextortion is a symptom,” he said. “It’s about a deeper issue. Boys aren’t taught to understand their own feelings or desires. We oversimplify their relationship to sex, to vulnerability, to connection. That needs to change.”

For a man who rose to fame as a rapper in his teens and navigated the chaotic world of fame and online attention, this issue hits home in more ways than one. “I never got caught in a scam,” he said, “but it could’ve happened. I was 19 and getting DMs from random girls all the time. You don’t think about the long-term.”

The silence around sextortion, especially among boys , is what allows it to thrive. That’s what Stephens hopes his documentary will begin to undo.

“It’s embarrassing,” he said. “So people don’t talk. But the more we talk, the less power these scammers have.”

Sometimes, the first step to fixing a problem is simply to see it. In confronting the face behind the scam, right there in Ibadan, Stephens may have just helped open the door for many others to step out of the shadows. (BusinessDay)