Steve's story - Sextortion

ABCIPI Asia has been established for 68 years and is now part of Wilsons Detective Group Partnership incorporating Anthony Bryan Corporate Intelligence and other brands.

​Sextortion is a major crime industry.

 At ABCIPI in the ‘day's of old' we simply called it Blackmail or Extortion.

Steve had been married for 20 years, and had four children. But Steve had a secret; although he was happily married he also liked sex with men. Steve had been transferred to Thailand with his employers an international bank.

When Steve was away from home on business often, Bangkok, Bahrain, Beirute  Cairo, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, throuout Asia and the Middle East and he would hook up with men, and then go home and resume his married life. It was something that had worked very well for him for many years. He had no intention of breaking up his marriage but as he described it to ABCIPI, this was an itch he just had to scratch, from time to time.

On a recent trip to Indonesia Steve hooked up with Joseph, a waiter in the hotel he was staying in. Steve was in the hotel for three nights and Joseph came to his room on each one of those nights.  Steve was travelling with other people from his banking firm so he didn’t see Joseph during the day.

Steve had given Joseph l his email address so that they could keep in touch for the next time that Steve was in Indonesia. Three days after he returned home, Steve got the shock of his life. As he opened the email Joseph had sent him he noticed that there was an attachment.  As he clicked on it, the colour drained from his face.  He was looking at extremely pornographic scenes of himself and Joseph in his hotel room.

When he read the email he told us, he threw up. It was a threat that if he did not pay €5000 by Western Union his starring role in Joseph X-rated movie would be sent to everybody in his family, friends and his work and even that the sports club that he was treasurer for.

Steve was of course horrified and in a panic he rushed straight to his bank and sent the €5000.   He tried to behave as normally as possible so that his wife would not suspect anything was wrong but he was in turmoil.  He got notification from Joseph that he had received the money, but that was not all. In this email Joseph was asking for another €5000.

That is when Steve made a better choice and came to us – ABCIPI Sextortion specialist investigators headquartered in Hong Kong – Lagos – London -Manila and covering the Globe 

He had heard about ABCIPI London from one of his colleagues who had used us to trace somebody who owed him money. Tracing of Asset and People is also part of the Wilsons Detectives Services.

When we first met him Steve was in a terrible state and terribly embarrassed about what has happened.  We were very quick to reassure him that we never judged anybody and that we would do everything we could to find is extortionists and stop them causing him any more problems.

ABCIPI cyber experts had very little difficulty in tracing the source of the emails that Steve had received. Then, working with the Indonesian police the criminals were tracked down and arrested. The police seized all they material that they were blackmailing people with, and Steve, although he had lost  €5000 could rest easy that Joseph and the other blackmailers could not approach him again.

 It turns out Joseph was part of a large gang targeting ‘closet homosexuals’

At ABCIPI we always advise that in these cases you never pay any ransom asked for, because as Steve found, pay once and they will be back for more and more. If you think that you may be a victim of sextortion, contact us immediately for a free confidential chat so that we can show you how we can help.
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