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Send-me-your-nude-pic: Will you give a Facebook like?
A blackmail and extortion scandal involving company executives, ruggerites, cricketers and bank employees is being investigated by the Cyber Crime division of the Criminal Investigations Department.
The probe was launched after the unit received at least 15 identical complaints in less than three months, a senior officer of the unit told the Sunday Times.
The modus operandi of the group believed to be involved in this racket begins with a friend request being sent under a woman’s name via facebook. If the request is reciprocated personal details are shared.
After about a month of communication the person begins divulging intimate details claiming that ‘she’ is married and that her husband was overseas or out of Colombo.
Next ‘she’ indicates that she is willing to begin an affair. This is followed with compromising pictures of herself being sent.
The officer said the face is cropped in these pictures preventing identification.
The ‘woman’ then asks for pictures of the man and if there is a positive response she sends a video depicting naked footage of herself. Once again with the face cropped.
The blackmailing begins when the person posing off as the woman demands that if the man sends a nude video of himself she too would send a similar video, this time revealing her face.
“Soon after a video is sent by a man the Facebook account operated by the ‘woman’ is logged off. About two days later ‘she’ logs into the account and claims that her husband had logged into the computer and seen the pictures and destroyed the computer.
The ‘woman’ claims she now lives with a friend and was using her computer,” the officer said.“The woman then demands Rs Rs 150,000, claiming that she has to buy a computer,” he continued.
Some men had sent the money believing that they could continue communicating with the ‘woman’, but a few days later they don’t get any response to messages sent via Facebook.
However they were soon in for a shock when they get a message from the ‘woman’ claiming that ‘her husband’ had restored the computer and was in possession of the compromising photographs of the sender.
This is followed by messages from the ‘husband’ claiming he was in possession of proof of an affair with his ‘wife’ and would be sending the pictures and videos to the sender’s superiors unless they paid up between Rs 500,000 to Rs 600,000.
Some of the men had panicked and paid the money while others who realized too late they had fallen into a trap and ignored the message, were in for a rude shock when their superiors informed them that they had received the pictures and videos.
The complaints have been coming in with the latest victim being an executive of a company. “This is the first time that we have received complaints of this nature and the public should be aware of this cyber crime,” the officer warned.