Four men killed themselves in the last year after being blackmailed as part of the increasing cyber racket.
International gangs are targeting more and more young lads using Facebook, Skype or Linkedin and tricking them into performing sex acts online.
The criminals then threaten to send the footage to the victim’s friends and family unless they pay up.
The number of people reporting sextortion has more than doubled to 864 in the year up to 2016.
Back in 2011 there were just nine.
Most victims are men aged between 21 and 30 – with a substantial proportion in the 11 to 20 age group.
Ronan Hughes, 17, from Clonoe, Co Tyrone, took his own life in June 2015 after a Nigerian gang duped him into sending intimate snaps – before demanding £3,000.
Sextortion gangs have been found identified out of Morocco, the Philippines and the Ivory Coast.
Last year more than 40 arrests were made in the Philippines, and there is one ongoing international prosecution connected to one of the suicides reported this year.
In one case the victim had been told "your life is over, you may as well go and kill yourself".
Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt, the National Police Chiefs' Council lead for kidnap and extortion and adult sexual offences, said: "This is organised crime.
While the individual cases themselves may involve relatively limited amounts of money, this is being organised by well-equipped, often off-shore organised crime groups that are facilitating this activity.
"And it targets people that are in social chat applications of one description or another, predominantly men, although we have seen some cases with women as the victim."
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