A Utah man says he was blackmailed after a woman he met on a porn site invited him to a private Skype chat and secretly recorded him. Police have yet to reveal the man’s identity or what he did on the video call. But it was apparently bad enough that the man paid out—in the form of $150 worth of porn site subscriptions.
Police told Utah’s KSL news that the blackmailers sent the man a message immediately after call ended. They’d tracked him down on Facebook and even knew the names of his friends and family. If he didn’t pay up, they’d send the video along to everyone he knew.
Terrified, the man maxed out his credit card on a bevy of porn sites. But, worried that the extortion wouldn’t stop, he soon turned to the police. They tracked the Skype number to a location in Arkansas, but after that hit a dead end–they believe the number was randomly generated by computer.
“He’s afraid,” sergeant Dan Bartlett told KSL. “He’s afraid that they’ll keep asking for money and keep trying to extort money out of him.”
He continued: “It’s new, it’s unique. I haven’t seen it before.”
While Bartlett may not have seen it before, this definitely isn’t a new technique. Pedophiles have long employed a similar tactic to exploit children using online video capture programs. It’s disconcerting, if not surprising, that the practice is starting to spread elsewhere. It’s just another reminder that you shouldn’t trust every naked stranger you meet on a porn site, no matter how seductive that Skype call is.
Watch the KSL report below:
Photo by Murph4513/Flickr