58 arrested for global ‘sextortion’ racket

MANILA, Philippines — (UPDATE 2 – 1:33 p.m.) Fifty-eight people have been arrested in the Philippines for their involvement in a giant, global Internet “sextortion” network, local police and Interpol announced in a joint press conference on Friday.

Victims in foreign countries have been lured by people in the Philippines into giving sexually explicit photos or videos about themselves online, then blackmailed for many thousands of dollars, the authorities said.

The 58 arrested in the Philippines were just a small part in an expanding global phenomenon that is being fuelled by the explosion of social media, the director of Interpol’s Digital Crime Centre, Sanjay Virmani said.

“The scale of this extortion network is massive,” Virmani said.

Philippine National Police Director General Alan Purisima said the 58 arrested suspects would be charged over a range of crimes, including engaging in child pornography, extortion and using technologies to commit fraud.

A statement from the Philippine National Police’s Anti-Cybercrime Group, headed by Senior Superintendent Gilbert Caasi Sosa, said the suspects were arrested April 30 in simultaneous operations in the Bicol region, Laguna, Bulacan and Taguig City, which also led to the seizure of 250 pieces of electronic evidence.

The multinational dragnet dubbed Oplan “Strike Back” involved, aside from agents of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission and Department of Justice, representatives from Scotland Yard, the Hong Kong and Singapore police, US Homeland Security Investigation, Child Exploitation Online Protection and the Australian federal police, the statement said.

Strike Back was hatched after the 1st Interpol Eurasian Working Group Meeting in Singapore in November 2013, which underscored “the growing number of sextortion victims in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, United Kingdom and the United States with potential victims in Australia, Korea and Malaysia.”

This was followed by a second “operation meeting,” also in Singapore, in March, which was participated in by representatives of payment systems and the judiciary.

The ACG said 52 suspects were arrested in Bicol, three in Bulacan and three in Laguna and Bulacan.

The statement named those nabbed in Laguna and Taguig City as Vincent Regori Bravo, Archie Tolin alias “Gian,” and Jomar Palacio alias “Park Ji Man,” who allegedly victimized people from the United Kingdom.

Arrested in San Jose del Monte, Bulacan were Aldrin Villamonte, Jemuel Matuguina, and Emuross Dela Cruz.

On the other hand, the ACG described the suspects in Bicol as “an organized group” that operated under the cover of several firms — “MoneyMaker Portal Web Solutions” in Naga City, Moneymagnet Portal Web Solutions in Libmanan, Money Builder Web Marketing Solutions in Nabua, and Mocha Bytes Web Solutions in Legazpi City.

Describing how the racket works, the ACG said sextortionists create accounts on social networking sites and other online services, usually using women’s names, to lure victims, typically elderly men.

They then engage prospective victims in online chats and eventually into engaging in cybersex, which is recorded.

The recorded material is then used to blackmail the victims, with payments ranging between $500-$2,000 (P20,000-90,000) made through Western Union and other money transfer remittance companies.

Scam destroys lives

But while elderly men were often targeted, senior representatives of foreign police agencies also attending the press conference said minors were also victims.

Detective chief inspector Gary Cunningham, from the Scottish police force’s major investigation team who also briefed reporters, said one teenager in Scotland had committed suicide after being extorted.

Cunningham said the boy was 17 when he killed himself.

More than 530 people in Hong Kong, many aged between 20 and 30, have fallen victim to the scam since the beginning of last year, according to Chief Inspector Louis Kwan, from the Chinese territory’s police commercial crime bureau.

Kwan said Hong Kong victims had paid up to $15,000 in desperate attempts to keep the sexually compromising material private.

But, once hooked, the victims sometimes found they could not escape.

Kwan said some victims paid up to three times before going to the police, “when they realized they could no longer afford to continue paying.”

PH ‘not the hub’

However, authorities emphasized the Philippines was not the hub of the global sextortion scams, only that the current investigation had focused on the Southeast Asian nation.

“These crimes are not limited to any one country and nor are the victims. That’s why international cooperation in investigating these crimes is essential,” Interpol’s Virmani said. –Cecil Morella, Agence France-Presse | Thom Andrade, InterAksyon.com