Every done anything so incredibly foolish as to ruin your reputation and put your relationships with friends, family and profession at risk? Yeah, me neither. But heaven bless them, folks sometimes do stupid things . . . and it is nice to be able to toss them a life preserver.
Recently, a well respected professional developed an online correspondence with an attractive person of the opposite sex, and images of a discreet nature were exchanged. Not real sure how this went down, but . . . dude.
Pretty soon after, the client was contacted via email by someone with a polite request for a large sum of money. In exchange, the sender kindly agreed to not post the previously exchanged boudoir shots on the client's Facebook page, or send them to the client's spouse, children, and every co-worker email address on the company website. Sounds like a heckuva good deal!
We helped the client to realize a few things:
1. They were hosed, and needed to come clean with people who may receive the images. The sextortionist's leverage was in the fear of those images being made public (thank you Psych 101).
2. If the turd was paid off, what prevents him from seeking additional booty? Saying "pretty please?"
3. It was just might have been a mistake to send those pics to begin with.
We decided to make the client a bad target and hit this scumbag in the mouth. We knew that 45% of these guys actually carry out their threats, but we wanted better odds. We installed tracking software in the client's email, which tracked the bad guy to Ghana, gave me his IP address, identified the times he read the email, and it showed that he forwarded it to someone in eastern Europe. We were able to identify the middle man for the transaction, a seedy malevolent ex-convict sex offender dirtbag here in the U.S. who served as the money mule.
Unfortunately, only 16% of victims report it to the police, which plays to the bad guy's chances of success. But we reported it to local law enforcement, to the FBI, and to LA's Cybercrime Task Force, then wrote the hoodlum an email that let him know that, and that he wouldn't receive one red cent from us. And that the client was not low hanging fruit as family, friends and employer have been advised of the photos.
We were also colorful with all kinds of threats involving alphabet agencies and that we knew where he was and net closing in and handcuffs and a cellmate named "Bubba." And that there would be no more communications, as the sleaze from this time forward was going to be blocked. (Like telling your kid to just ignore the other kids when they tease him.)
The tracking software showed the idiot repeatedly opened our email, no doubt incredulous. He made a couple anemic threats, then went on to seeking greener pastures elsewhere . . . and he will no doubt will find them. There is no shortage of people doing stupid things. But he left our client alone.
Truth be told, cases like this are a dime a dozen, and a week doesn't go by when the FBI or even the Cybercrime Task Force receives a complaint about these types of extortions. There are a lot of things our clients can do to not be victimized, but chief among them is exercising some gosh darn common sense and not put a bullseye on their forehead.
But not exercising common sense sure makes my job interesting!
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