The FTC sued a paid 'sextortion assistance' service. Here is what actually helps

On October 13, 2026, the Federal Trade Commission announced that a federal court had granted its request to temporarily halt a company that sold itself as a rescue service for people being blackmailed with intimate images. The FTC’s complaint alleges that the company, its owner and eleven affiliated companies collected at least $60 million from victims while routinely doing almost nothing the victims were paying for.

The specifics are worth reading, because the sales pitch is common and the failure modes are predictable. According to the complaint, Digital Forensics Corporation LLC and its owner, Dmitry Belkin, charged consumers between $1,499 and $20,000 for a “Phase 1” package that was supposed to include tracking the extortionist’s location, communicating with them, producing an investigative report and reporting the crime to law enforcement — and in many instances did not perform those services. Victims were then pressed to buy “Phase 2.” To protect its reputation, the company allegedly suppressed negative reviews and manufactured thousands of positive ones. Where it did act, the FTC says, it often simply blocked the sender on the victim’s account — something the victim could do in seconds — invented chat transcripts, used made-up investigative information, and did not contact law enforcement.

Read that as an allegation, not a finding. The case is before the US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, the Commission’s vote to file was 2-0, and the FTC’s own boilerplate is explicit that a complaint states what the Commission has reason to believe and that the court decides the case.

This article is about federal law and what a person can actually do; it is not legal advice about your situation. The FTC Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule and the TAKE IT DOWN Act apply nationwide. State consumer-protection statutes and the authority of a state attorney general are separate and vary by state, and anything about recovering money you paid turns on your own state’s law.

The one sentence in the case worth remembering

The most useful allegation in the complaint is not about the price. It is about the advice.

The FTC alleges that the company told victims not to block the extortionist, so that the company could keep handling the conversation — advice the FTC describes as contrary to the advice of the FBI and other law enforcement experts. Stop and notice why that instruction is so damaging: the one action a blackmail victim can take immediately, alone and for free, is the action the seller told them not to take. Every day that conversation continued was a day the company could bill for.

The complaint also alleges the company used scare scripts tuned to who the victim was — telling a servicemember that the attack could end in a dishonorable discharge, or telling a married victim that the sender would approach their spouse and in-laws. That is pressure applied to someone in crisis: the director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection said in announcing the case that the company “preys on consumers already in crisis, exploiting victims of sextortion by using fear to pressure them into paying thousands of dollars for services that are never provided.”

There is a structural reason a purchased “tracking campaign” was never likely to deliver. The FTC describes sextortion as routinely carried out by foreign scammers, which is the fact that makes the promise of identifying and reporting a perpetrator to US law enforcement so hard to keep.

What the FTC says to do instead

The FTC’s consumer-advice arm published its own guidance the same day, and it is short enough to quote in full, because the whole point is that none of it is complicated:

• Ignore and block the blackmailer. Do not pay them, and do not give them access to your devices or your financial accounts. Ignore the messages and stop communicating.
• Talk with someone you trust — a friend, a family member or a counsellor.
• Report it to criminal law enforcement. Sextortion is a serious crime. Report the perpetrator to your local police and to the FBI at tips.fbi.gov or 1-800-225-5324. If a minor is involved, report it through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s CyberTipline.
• Research any paid service before you trust it. Search the company’s name with the words “scam”, “review” or “complaint”, and scroll past the paid search results — the complaint against this company alleges it bought its reputation, so the top of a search page is the least reliable place to look.

The FTC also named the websites it says were behind this operation — BlackmailHelpline.com, DigitalForensics.com, CyberBlackmail911.com and SecurityBreach911.com — as examples of the pattern. The search-results point is the general lesson: a company that generates its own reviews has an interest in being the first thing you find.

The right that actually removes an image

The reason the accusation about that one instruction lands so hard is that there is now a real, free, statutory route that does not involve paying anyone: the TAKE IT DOWN Act.

The FTC enforces section 3 of the Act, which set a May 19, 2026 deadline for covered platforms — websites, apps and online services including social media, messaging, image and video sharing, and gaming platforms — to do two things: give people a way to request removal of intimate images posted without consent, and remove those images and known identical copies within 48 hours of a valid request, at no charge.

If a platform does not act, the reporting route is TakeItDown.ftc.gov, which the FTC launched for exactly this. The reporting site also collects the free support routes in one place:

Situation	Where to go
Image of a minor, or to report it	NCMEC CyberTipline; NCMEC’s Take It Down service for stopping the spread
Image of an adult, to stop it spreading	StopNCII.org
Distress, any time	988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988
Domestic abuse context	National Domestic Violence Hotline, 1-800-799-7233 (text START to 88788)

None of those costs money, and none of them requires a company to act on your behalf. That contrast — a free statutory right against a $1,499 package — is the entire article.

If you already paid

Three things are worth knowing, and the first is a limit on what the FTC’s case can do for you personally.

• The FTC’s lawsuit is not your refund, and it is not a claim you have to file to be counted. The Commission states that it does not resolve individual consumer reports. Where an FTC case does produce refunds, the agency says most of its cases do not require a claim at all — a court order typically requires the defendants to hand over a list of customers and what they paid — and that payments cannot go out until the legal action is complete and the money has been collected. Its refund cases are listed at ftc.gov/refunds, and the FTC adds that accepting a payment does not require you to give up rights you have under federal or state law.
• Report anyway, and report to more than one place. The FTC collects reports at ReportFraud.ftc.gov; your state attorney general’s consumer-protection office is a separate channel with separate authority; and if a crime was committed against you, the local police and the FBI channels above are the criminal route, not the civil one.
• Do not pay anyone to recover the money. The FTC’s own subject heading for this is blunt — “the worst of the worst: scams that target people who have already lost money to a scam”. Its guidance: “Don’t trust calls, letters, emails, texts, or messages on social media from someone who says they can recover money you lost in a scam for a fee. You’ll lose more money.” Government agencies and legitimate organisations will never ask for money to help you get a refund, and the FTC states that it never requires upfront fees or sensitive information such as your Social Security number or bank account details. Anyone who asks is not the FTC.

Whether you can sue the company yourself, and what you could recover, depends on your state’s law and on the contract you agreed to — questions for a lawyer in your state, or for a small local claim in the right circumstances, which the network explains in what small claims court can and cannot do.

The primary sources behind this article, and the rest of the network’s library, are collected in the official government resources directory.

This article is educational content for general information only and is not legal advice. It does not create an attorney-client relationship and does not apply to any individual’s situation, which depends on facts and on state law.