ST. LOUIS – FBI agents from across the United States, including St. Louis, have broken up a global sextortion ring in an effort dubbed Operation Artemis.

According to the FBI, 22 suspects in Nigeria have been arrested, three of whom have been extradited to the U.S. for prosecution. The remaining suspects are in the process of being extradited.

The impact of the crackdown in recent years has been dramatic in St. Louis and beyond, investigators said.

The FBI has released a powerful new video highlighting Operation Artemis. It begins with the voice of a father who lost his son to a sextortion-related suicide.

“Imagine somebody walking into your home in the middle of the night and shooting your son in the head,” the father says in the video. “This person did something even worse than that. He scared (my son) so bad that he shot himself.”

The FBI says agents from 13 U.S., cities including St. Louis, were part of a command post in Lagos, Nigeria. The team of investigators from five countries, including Canada and Australia, tracked U.S. sextortion reports to the 22 suspects. About half of them are linked to more than 20 victims who’ve committed suicide.

The suspects are accused of tricking teens into sharing explicit photos or videos of themselves and forcing them to, in effect, pay a ransom to keep the suspects from telling the victims’ parents or making the photos and videos public.

Joe Weston, acting assistant Special Agent in Charge for the FBI’s St. Louis office, told FOX 2 News the payments can range from gift cards to thousands of dollars.

“These guys just keep coming back, now that they know someone’s going to pay money, they’ll continue to harass this person and try to get as much as they can from whoever they’re victimizing,” Weston said. “So, it’s kind of an endless cycle that doesn’t stop.”

Ayotunde Solademi, an investigator and FBI attaché in Nigeria, says in the video, “There’s no hiding place. Any criminal, wherever you are, you definitely will be hunted down and arrested and made to pay for your crimes.”

The investigation remains ongoing.

Agents say their awareness efforts are paying off. There’s been roughly a 75% drop in new cases reported in the St. Louis metro alone, according to the FBI.

Parents play a key role, too, said Weston, a father of teenagers.

“Just to have those ongoing conversations with their kids, to talk about online safety, online predators, to talk about what sextortion is; just to make their kids feel comfortable coming to them if they find themselves in trouble,” he said.

None of the suicide victims connected to these Nigerian suspects is from St. Louis, authorities said.

Operation Artemis launched in 2023.