Shanu, a 33-year-old Nigerian, will appear in court in London later this month after an extradition request from the United States.
A suspected sextortion blackmailer, Olamide Shanu, is believed to have made up to £2 million by threatening to release embarrassing photos and videos of boys.
Shanu, a 33-year-old Nigerian, will appear in court in London later this month after an extradition request from the United States.
He is accused of posing online as a teenage girl to persuade boys to send sexually explicit photos.
It is alleged he then threatened to send the compromising images to his victims'' families, friends and even the media if they refused to pay him.
At least three British schoolchildren have killed themselves as a result of being blackmailed over sexually explicit images.
According to Mail Online, one alleged victim set up a payment plan with Shanu, sending him £240 a week until he had handed the blackmailer almost £8,000.
Shanu''s cryptocurrency account is believed to have received more than 6,000 payments over three years, leading investigators to estimate the number of victims to be in the hundreds.
According to The Times, the threat is believed to have come from Nigeria.
Shanu is accused of being involved in an international blackmail scam.
He was arrested in Surrey at the end of last year and is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates'' Court on May 28.
The alleged blackmailer is wanted in the US on charges including conspiracy to cyberstalk, interstate communications with intent to commit extortion and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The US Secret Service has alleged that Shanu and other conspirators used fake and stolen online profiles with pictures of attractive women to target boys through Instagram and other social media platforms.
They then persuaded their victims to send explicit images and videos of themselves and even to appear naked in ''live chat'' sessions while the conspirators posed as adult film actresses to hide their true identities.
The victims were threatened and blackmailed into making payments either through gift cards or via cryptocurrency.
Blackmailers also used stolen Snapchat accounts to target American victims.
The payments were all traced to an account in Binance, a popular cryptocurrency exchange, which was opened using Shanus passport as proof of identity along with an address in Lagos.
By the time the account was traced, it had been emptied of $2.6 million-worth of bitcoin amassed in the previous three years.
Luke Lack, a Secret Service special agent, wrote in the criminal complaint that the Binance account had received funds from victims of various frauds, including sextortion and romance scams.
Secret Service investigators allegedly linked the account to email addresses containing other identity documents belonging to Shanu, and screenshots of messages showing his involvement in the sextortion scheme including one with the name Chloe Walterz.
They also identified two other alleged victims.
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