Teen targeted by scammer shares his ‘scary’ experience to warn others of dangers

SOUTH JORDAN — A South Jordan teen and his family are sounding the alarm after a scam text took a dark turn.

Within days of responding — the predator was targeting the 14-year-old, and police said this is a lot more common than you might think.

It started with a text coming from an unknown number. Jack Monsen knows the texts come from scammers. He and his friends think it’s funny to “flip the script” on the scammers by sending back nonsense messages. But this time around, things got scary.

Like most 14-year-olds, Jack is on his phone quite a bit. He shares funny memes with his parents. Even his mom, Mandy Monsen, knows how Jack and his buddies like to taunt the scammers. In the recent case, the scammer offered Jack a job.

“Because he started texting me, I thought it would be funny to make this a bad experience for him,” Jack said.

But within a few days, the scammer reached out again, this time on WhatsApp, and with more personal information.

“It was like ‘hello Jack’,” Jack said. He was taken aback that they knew his name. And they were getting more forward, sending and asking for pictures.

“I was like ‘no, I’m self-conscious I don’t like sending to pictures to anyone,'” Jack said.

Then the texter started sending pornographic images.

“I was shaking,” Jack said. “I was really scared.”

At this point, Jack told his parents.

“The pornographic pictures popped up and my stomach just dropped,” Mandy Monsen said.

She knew about her son’s efforts to “mess” with scammers, but this was scary.

“I was devastated that someone was talking to my son,” Mandy Monsen said. “I mean he’s my baby.”

She called the police and took the phone in.

“We’ve seen a huge increase in teen victims in these types of crimes across the country,” Sgt. Eric Anderson with the South Jordan Police Department said.

Chances are, the Monsens will never know who was targeting Jack. But the family has learned some important lessons that they hope others won’t have to learn on their own.

“I’m definitely going to tell everybody I know; adults, kids, teenagers, because you never know,” Mandy said.

Jack said going to his parents wasn’t easy, but absolutely necessary.

“Let others know, if you’re not comfortable telling your parents, there’s always other people you can go to,” Jack said.

Police said if you get one of these messages, you should not respond. You should delete it and block the number.