Police open 25 investigation papers on extortion cases involving losses of RM150,000

GEORGE TOWN: Police have opened 25 investigation papers into extortion cases using video calls and sex service offers through social media, involving losses of RM150,000 from January until yesterday.

Timur Laut district police chief ACP Soffian Santong said all the victims were men, aged between 17 and 50 years.

"The syndicate's modus operandi is to use social media platforms such as Facebook, Wechat, MiChat, Line and Tinder to find victims before offering sex or pornographic video call services," he said in a statement today.

Soffian said for the sex service offer, the syndicate would ask their victims to pay a deposit and additional payments.

If the victims refused to follow the instruction, the syndicate would threaten them by sending photos or videos of injured people and tell the victims that they would have the same fate, he said.

For the video calls, Soffian said the syndicate would get women to seduce the victims and ask them to get naked, while the calls were being recorded by the suspect.

"The syndicate will then threaten the victims to make payments or else they would share the video with the victims' contacts or release it on social media. The suspect would also continue to contact the victims using different local or foreign phone numbers to threaten and intimidate them," he said.

All cases were being investigated under Sections 384 and 385 of the Penal Code and Section 233 of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998.

-- BERNAMA