AG Bonta Announces Action on Cryptocurrency, Sextortion Fraud – Increasingly Targeting Gen-Z

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has warned residents about a surge in cryptocurrency fraud and online sextortion schemes increasingly targeting Generation Z through social media platforms including Twitch, TikTok and Instagram. With internet-based scams costing Americans nearly 21 billion dollars in 2023, Bonta highlighted how artificial intelligence and deepfakes allow criminals to impersonate loved ones and promote fraudulent investment groups. The Attorney General's Office has shut down over 100 fraudulent websites and is now utilising new legislative tools under Senate Bill 1208, signed into law in 2024, which allows law enforcement to petition a court to return seized cryptocurrency to victims, including when alleged perpetrators are outside the United States.

Platform-based enforcement, even when strengthened by new asset-recovery powers, addresses only the financial endpoint of sextortion, leaving the initial grooming, image solicitation and coercion cycle intact. Guardii, a Meta Business Partner, operates at the upstream point where harm begins, detecting age-inappropriate contact, escalating requests for imagery, and coercive payment demands within direct-message conversations on the very platforms Attorney General Bonta identifies as primary attack vectors. Its anti-sextortion module flags hostile accounts before a child sends anything, enabling rapid escalation to law enforcement with a structured threat profile rather than requiring investigators to reconstruct the coercion sequence from cryptocurrency transaction records after the harm has occurred and the funds have moved offshore.