NCAA, FBI Team Up To Prevent Athlete ‘Sexploitation’

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and FBI have joined forces to prevent athletes from being sexually exploited online.

In a press release from the FBI, the organization announced its partnership with the NCAA to “inform student-athletes of some of the cyber-enabled tactics sexual exploitation actors use to obtain and sell their private images.”

While the NCAA and FBI will not work together as a joint investigative unit, they plan to raise awareness, provide education, and improve victim support to collegiate athletes. 

“The FBI has determined that student-athletes are frequently targeted due to their public profiles, which are often expanded through Name, Image, and Likeness activity, and their visible standing within their schools and communities,” the FBI announced in a statement. “This visibility increases both their exposure to targeting and the leverage offenders believe they hold when threatening exposure.”

“The FBI and NCAA are asking coaches, compliance staff, and athletic department leadership to be part of closing this gap, since they may be the first trusted adults an athlete would turn to. Having these resources available to an athlete before they ever need them is one of the most direct ways an athletic program can protect its own.”

In the public service announcement published Monday, the FBI explained the three most common tactics used by these criminals. Password and PIN targeting, social media customer service impersonations, and phishing are used to gain access to sexually explicit content from the victims, where it is later posted or sold to criminal marketplaces where offenders can blackmail athletes.

Although the FBI does not have specifics regarding the number of NCAA members affected by explicit content being spread, an estimated $44 million was spent preventing the crime in 2025, and over 75,000 submissions of “sexploitation” were reported.

Student-athletes are just as likely to be victims of these crimes as anyone else. In 2022, two male competitors at Penn State were victims of sexual extortion by a woman they both met on a dating app, who was responsible for the same crime across multiple states. Jordan Demay’s story was published on ESPN last year, after he died due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound after online scammers threatened to post explicit photos of him they obtained online if he didn’t pay them over $1,000.

“We hope to break down barrier[s] so law enforcement can help prevent further abuse and connect college athletes who may be targeted with the right support,” NCAA Vice President of Enforcement Jon Duncan said in the statement. 

“If we can play even a small role in preventing these crimes or getting justice or appropriate support for the people impacted by them, we will do everything to help.”