BILLERICA (WBZ-AM) -- Police are warning parents after somebody solicited several middle school girls for inappropriate photos on Snapchat--and threatened to send out faked photos if they didn't.
Billerica Deputy Police Chief Roy Frost told WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Carl Stevens that there have been at least seven reports of an unknown person or persons, using at least two Snapchat accounts, reaching out to the girls over the app asking them to send naked pictures.
If they didn't send the photos, Roy said, things got even more sinister.
"They would essentially blackmail them by telling them that they're going to send photographs of them out to their friends, that they're going to claim to be them," Frost said. "Photoshopped photos, essentially commercially internet-available pornography that they would claim would be them."
Frost said the crimes could prompt an important conversation between parents and their children.
"This is something tangible that they can actually talk about," Deputy Chief Frost said. "Once they send something over the internet, it does not go away."