Digital Criminal Activity - Coercion via scandalous images becoming increasingly prevalent
Down in the southwest, a troubling trend is on the rise - victims of extortion scams involving naked pictures. The Stuttgart State Criminal Police Office (LKA) refers to this as "sextortion." Here, people are pressured by criminals to send explicit photos or videos of sexual acts, and then blackmailed. Before this, the con artists create trust with the victims. Here's how it goes:
Using social media and online platforms, these crooks approach potential targets under false names and identities, flirt with them, engage in conversations or chats, all with the intention of getting intimate images from their victims. They pretend to be the perfect romantic interest, but as soon as they've got their hands on the photos, they threaten to release them and demand large amounts of money.
Just in this year, there have been numerous cases in the southwest. For instance, a guy in the Bodenseekreis was extorted in April with salacious images he had shared with a "nice contact" while convinced he was in love. In Rastatt, two men fell victim to these crafty scammers at the end of March. In the district of Freudenstadt, a 58-year-old paid around €3,000 to extortionists in January after unknown women had blackmailed him with nude pics over a long period, eventually threatening to make them public. In the district of Ravensburg, a 28-year-old recently forked out several hundred euros to some shady character after being snared by sextortion.
This scam has been around for a few years and has been cautioned against by police departments across the country. According to the LKA Stuttgart, the number of cases reported in the police criminal statistics (PKS) in Baden-Württemberg dropped from 308 to 102 in 2023. However, this decrease is attributed to better data collection. In 2022, a lot of these crimes were labeled "Inland" and thus ended up in the PKS-Inland - even though they were committed by people outside the country.
In 2023, sextortion crimes were consistently categorized to show whether they were committed domestically or abroad. The 102 cases listed in the PKS-Inland from the previous year don't provide an accurate picture of the true extent of this issue, explains an LKA spokesperson. "The cases recorded in the PKS-Abroad are several times higher, with an increasing trend." But the PKS-Abroad is still being set up, and the data it contains aren't publicly available yet. These criminals usually operate anonymously, and there's reason to believe there's a significant underreporting of such cases.
According to the victim protection organization "Weisser Ring," men are the main targets. The LKA has no information on this, nor on the age distribution of the people who fall prey to these extortionists. Young people and young adults are also seeing an increase in targeting by the sextortionists, says the Child Protection Coordinating Office (LKFS). "The counseling centers are seeing a surge in demand for counseling," says the LKSF office manager, Martina Huck. "The hotline is registering a significant increase in need for support," says a spokesperson.
Sexortion is a mix of the words "Sex" and "Extortion" (blackmail). The German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) included Sextortion along with Identity Theft and Phishing in the top three threats in the "Society" category in its Information Security Situation Report for 2023.
Additional information on Sextortion:Police press release from March 4: White Ring on SextortionPolice press release from the Ravensburg Police on May 23: Sextortion by the White Ring
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Source: www.stern.de
