You are about to open your favorite social network, as you do every day. Surprise: you find a new friend request. It is someone you don’t know. You review this person’s profile… mainly their photos. From what you can see, this is someone extremely attractive, someone out of the ordinary. Surely something about you caught their attention, so you decide to accept the friend request. How could you not?
You begin interacting with this person and, beyond the physical attraction, you discover a fascinating and captivating personality. It seems unreal. This is the person of your dreams.
But there is a small problem. You already have a beautiful family partner, children, parents and a very good job with great coworkers. So, what now?
Fine, you decide to delete this new friend. But you can’t. It’s stronger than you. Worse yet, sensing your hesitation, this person reveals that they also feel extremely attracted to you. This is powerful.
As you are caught in a whirlwind of emotions about what to do, something unexpected happens.
The person begins to show intimate images of themselves. And from images, they move to videos. The level of intimacy increases uncontrollably.
It becomes addictive.
May I burst your bubble? I’m sorry to tell you that you have fallen victim to one of the most common and deadly types of online extortion. A sub-variant the deadliest of what is known as the “Romance Scam.”
And this type of scam can reach unimaginable extremes, with the most tragic outcomes.
One such tragic ending took place just a few days ago in New South Wales, Australia, reminding the world of the most iconic and devastating case of this type, back in 2014 in Glasgow, Scotland.
That case put UK authorities on full alert, eventually locating the source of the scam in the province of Norzagaray in the Philippines. This led to the massive international police operation known as “Strikeback,” the largest operation ever conducted against this type of harassment.
Let’s see what was discovered...
Norzagaray is a rural environment with very humble families living in poverty. However, something was completely out of place in the eyes of international authorities: young people were walking through muddy streets wearing genuine designer brand clothing not fakes. The situation did not match the environment.
There was only one logical explanation: the town was being funded by a massive online sexual extortion operation. The entire community worked toward a shared criminal purpose, under a single organization, commanded by one public figure, the pioneer of the industry.
Her name was María Caparas “The Queen of Sextortion.”
So how did the system work?
Operation Strikeback revealed a highly refined online extortion process, consisting of seven meticulously defined phases:
Phase One: A member of the organization created a fake Facebook profile, stealing the identity and photos of real Japanese, Chinese, or Korean women highly attractive. Every time the original owner posted a new photo, a copy was uploaded to the fake profile.
Phase Two: The scammer searched Facebook for profiles of professional men with good jobs and lifestyles who (importantly) had a family wife and children. A friend request was sent. If the victim accepted, the hook was set. most of the work was already done.
Phase Three: Through chat, the scammer-built trust, establishing a seemingly innocent friendship that slowly evolved into something more. This phase could take hours, days, or weeks depending on the victim’s level of engagement.
Phase Four: The scammer invited the victim to move the conversation to a private messaging or video platform outside the social network to make the interaction “more intimate.” (Likely to avoid platform monitoring.)
Pause here.
Parallel to this, the scammer was preparing her main weapon. She selected a pornographic video and studied every movement of the actress in detail every wave, kiss, and transition. She knew the video frame by frame.
Now let’s continue...
Phase Five: The scammer told the victim she wanted to appear nude on video and then played the pre-selected video. If at any point the victim became suspicious, she would warn that she was going to blow a kiss, wave, or perform a movement and then she would imperceptibly fast-forward the video to that exact moment. The victim never detected the deception.
Phase Six: At the end of the video, the victim was asked to “reciprocate” by performing a similar intimate action. When the victim complied, the scammer recorded it, stored the video, and abruptly ended the communication.
Phase Seven: The house of cards collapsed. The scammer revealed her true identity and demanded money, threatening to send the video to the victim’s wife, mother, children, employer, and coworkers all details collected in Phase Two.
This ongoing blackmail continued indefinitely, whether the victim paid or not. The video was repeatedly shown to the victim, increasing anxiety and even deep depression. This continued until the victim stopped paying (often because they had no money left). At that point, the scammer carried out the threat, making the video public after first suggesting, in extreme escalation, that the victim should take their own life as the only way out.
Dehumanization has been taken to unthinkable extremes.
María Caparas was arrested and later released, likely due to legal loopholes another scourge of cyberspace.
What lesson can be drawn from this tragic episode? Above all, the internet is synonymous with anonymity.
Internet is to anonymity as anonymity is to the internet. Simple. We can never be certain who is on the other side. Educating both the young and the old and building layers of skepticism around digital interactions is essential for our safety and that of our loved ones.
Monsters exist and they are just a few clicks away.
Source: “The Queen of Sextortion,” The Dark Web