OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
7:55 AM – Tuesday, April 7, 2026
California lawmakers have introduced state legislation titled the Protecting Our Children from Online Extortion Act to create a new criminal offense for adults who use a minor to harass or exploit another minor.
On Tuesday, California state Senator Tony Strickland, a Republican, presented Senate Bill 1015 to the Senate Public Safety Committee to close a loophole used by child predators. He explained that predators, knowing that consensual sex or interactions between minors are not criminalized in California, may coerce minors into exploiting other minors.
“Right now, our laws are a step behind,” Strickland said. “These networks are growing rapidly.”
The bill expands an existing extortion statute by explicitly calling out sexual conduct, intimate images, and explicit images generated by artificial intelligence (AI) as categories of conduct that can constitute extortion.
“Any person who recruits, directs, coerces, or uses a minor to influence or facilitate illegal or harmful conduct toward another minor, or to harass, groom, or solicit any physical harm, sexual conduct, or images of an intimate body part from another minor, including through electronic means, social media, in person, or by any other method … is guilty of a felony,” the bill reads.
These acts would be punishable by state imprisonment for two, four, or six years.
Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes said it would target groups like an online gang called 764, which blackmails minors into performing sex acts, self-harm and animal torture. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said in February that more than 350 investigations are linked to this group.
Barnes highlighted one local case in which an adult used an online gaming platform to pressure a 12-year-old boy into having sexual relations with his 10-year-old sister. In another case, a 15-year-old in an online group called in a bomb threat and an active shooter threat.
“Gaps in current law hinder investigations,” the sheriff said. “Adults can be charged for a direct exploitation or extortion, but there is no clear charge when a minor is manipulated to exploit another minor.”
Strickland added that the majority of 764’s investigations were related to child sexual abuse material, and that the new legislation would cover about 70% of these cases in California.
“The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported a 115% —115%! — increase in sadistic online exploitation from 2024 to 2025,” the state senator stated.
“The pattern they use to harm our children is consistent,” he explained. “First, they befriend the child online. Then they isolate them. Then they coerce them into producing explicit images, self-harm content, or other compromising material, and once they have that material, they weaponize it.”
“What makes [this] especially dangerous is what comes next. Victims are not just exploited, they are turned into tools. They are forced to recruit, threaten and extort other minors.”
The state senator wrote on X Tuesday that he proposed the legislation with his two children in mind.
“My bill ensures our laws evolve as quickly as these crimes, so we can protect kids in the digital age,” he said.
Democrats supported the bill, and it is now headed to another panel for fiscal analysis.
“We have treated youth differently than we treat adults, but some of the behavior that has created issues of safety in the community, I think have to be addressed and addressed aggressively,” said state Senator Anna Caballero, a Democrat.
State legislators have until the end of August to send the bill to the governor for his signature.
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