VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Maggie Southall Bartz knew something was wrong when she said she received a message on Instagram from an account she didn't recognize. The account claimed to know something about the Virginia Beach teen.
She said the account then messaged her 12 nude images that looked like her in the photos.
"My heart completely dropped. It was so disturbing. I wanted to throw up. My heart was beating so fast," Bartz said.
The images, it turned out, were fake.
"These are modeling pictures that I've done before, so I'm very familiar with the pictures. I had seen them a million times. I just hadn't seen them with nakedness," she said.
Bartz, now 18, said the images someone altered were from when she was younger and still a minor.
"Having that sent to you and knowing it's not real - but someone has these images and they could be anywhere else. My employer could have these images. My college could have these images," she said.
She believes someone used Artificial Intelligence to doctor the images.
She reported it to police in April.
Virginia Beach Police told WTKR the investigation remains active.
"I was afraid to tell my parents at first, but I knew this was pretty serious and I was terrified and I wanted something to be done about it," she said.
Virginia Beach Police said these cases can be hard to solve because oftentimes the perpetrators are using computer systems that trace overseas, which can lead to the cases being closed without an arrest.
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Bartz doesn't know why she was targeted, but investigators said oftentimes these types of crimes are meant to exploit people for money or actual nude images of someone.
That's called sextortion.
"They're exploiting the children in saying that if you don't send me money we're going to tell your parents. We're going to tell your school what you've done and posted, what you shared with us, but we need money in return," Dede Wallace, a victim assistance specialist for Homeland Security Investigations, said in an April interview on sextortion.
Bartz wanted to share her story as a warning for others.
"I think it's important to know that this could happen to anybody, literally anybody who has just a couple of dollars and wants to make you have a bad day," she said.
She's hoping to put it behind her as she attends acting school in the fall.
"I'm really going to try and forget about it as anyone would try to in my situation," she said.
