With the relatively modern crime of sextortion casting a cautionary chill through social media, PJ police arrested a woman yesterday after she flew into Lisbon airport “from outside the Schengen Area” whose activities appear to have earned her many hundreds of thousands of euros.
According to the PJ, it has been possible through the National Unit for Combating Cybercrime and Technological Crime to ascertain that the 40-year-old is the holder of bank accounts that were used in the ‘sextortion’. One of these accounts showed “transactions totalling more than half a million euros”.
Admittedly the woman is “involved in other inquiries”, says the PJ statement. Thus sextortion may simply be a way of financing whatever other activities she may be linked to.
‘Sextortion’, explains the statement, consists of “approaching victims via social networks”. The woman would then hold online conversations with the victims, “inviting them to share intimate content (images and/ or videos) in this way, including through video calls”.
With this content in her possession, the woman later “would demand payment of certain sums of money, under threat of publicising it to family members, friends and professional contacts”.
The mere fact that this ploy ‘worked’ suggests victims may well have been carefully selected – certainly not random.
For now, the woman is suspected of committing the offences of fraud, extortion and money laundering, and will be questioned later today to decide on possible bail measures.
Source: LUSA
