Italian police investigate Skype use for ‘porno blackmail’

Trend is a growing international phenomenon

By Philip Willan

IDG News Service – Italian police in Genoa have opened an investigation into the use of Skype to trap victims into online sexual indiscretions, which are recorded and used as a pretext for extortion.

A first complaint was lodged with the police last September by a Genoese businessman, said Alessandra Belardini, a deputy police chief with the postal and communications police.

Magistrates in the northwestern port city of Genoa are now investigating a total of 11 examples of a growing worldwide phenomenon that is rarely reported to the authorities.

The Genoa case involves four attractive young women who allegedly struck up online friendships using social media, such as Facebook, Badoo and Chatroulette, and then enticed their victims into increasingly explicit sexual behavior to be recorded by webcam on Skype.

Police are investigating the possibility that the scam was organized by a male resident in another European country.

“The victims are of all ages and social classes,” Belardini said in an interview at her office on the outskirts of Rome. “Many of them are ashamed and are reticent about reporting the blackmail attempt to the authorities.”

The scammers seek to obtain the list of their victims’ Facebook friends and then threaten to send the embarrassing videos to them unless they are paid. “They normally ask for a!500 [US$693],” Belardini said.

The scammers sometimes tell their victims that they are under 18 years old and threaten to report them to the police for cultivating an inappropriate sexual relationship with a minor.

The police do not have centrally collated data on the number of blackmail complaints, since Italy’s three police forces often

investigate crimes independently of one another, but this year there have already been nine complaints reported to the authorities in Bologna and a further 12 in the northern city of Bolzano.

Police advise victims not to pay and to report blackmail demands to the authorities, but they acknowledge that this relatively new form of cybercrime is hard to prosecute, and the punishments are far from draconian.

It can be difficult gathering the evidence of Internet and telephone traffic to prove a connection between the members of an extortion gang and particularly difficult to achieve results when someone is operating from outside Italy, Belardini said.

Suspects convicted of fraud risk a prison sentence of between six months and three years and a fine of up to about a!1,000. If convicted of extortion the penalty could rise to a maximum of 10 years imprisonment and a a!2,000 fine…

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