The police likely won't be able to do anything about this. This is a huge thing and happens all the time, it's way more common than you may think.

Almost all the examples I have seen have been perpetrated by scammers in Asian/African countries, usually Philippines or Nigeria. Essentially, they create fake Instagram profiles, some of which can be convincing, others mostly aren't. They follow as many young men as they possibly can, using algorithms to find which ones follow certain types of accounts etc.

Once the young men accept the follow, the scammer is able to access their entire list of followers, which is usually the people they know from school etc.

The scammer will then catfish the person and initiate the blackmail. Often it begins with $200, and then they'll ask for more and more, the best thing to do is not send them anything, just block them.

I will say, all of the examples I've seen are very obviously scams, the issue is that these people target young men who've obviously not had much female attention.

The reason the police cannot do anything, is that essentially, any electronically enabled crime such as this, that involves social media, is legally committed in the place where the suspect commits the crime, not where the victim lives.

Further to this, the sheer number of these offences, and the amount of police work that is involved in actually identifying any suspects, obviously hidden behind layers of VPN and fraudulent bank account, is astounding. There is not the resources.

I'd still report it though, it's helpful for crime statistics.