Posted on 07/25/2018 6:17:58 AM PDT by C19fan
Widespread sextortion campaign is being orchestrated by scammers who falsely claim to have webcam recordings of victims watching pornography in order to demand bitcoin payment.
The culprits—who threaten to release the non-existent footage to the victims' close contacts if money is not received—have already made around $125,000 from the scheme to date, according to security researcher SecGuru, who is monitoring the bitcoin addresses used by the scammers. “Victims continue to pay, do not do this, it is a scam!” SecGuru tweeted on Monday.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
This is funny. The webcam looks out from the screen—it can show you sitting there, but not what you’re watching.
Maybe they should extort. I hear porn is a big problem.
Everything has a footprint now.
“If the shoe fits...”
This sounds like Monty Python’s “Blackmail” sketch.
It might show you having a private moment with Mr. Wiggles, though.
Seems the Bitcoin crowd is kinda gullible. I bet no one seen that coming!
I got one of these myself a while back. I researched it a bit and found that it’s not a new scam, it’s been going around in Europe for a while.
I deleted it.
It’s tempting to say, well, let them go ahead and scam porn watchers.
I don’t, because scammers are conscienceless predators who prey on people’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities. I work with a primarily elderly population and I hear about these things all the time. Scammers are as likely to bilk an 85-year-old great-grandma out of her retirement check as to bilk a middle-aged porn addict, maybe more likely.
There’s the IRS scam: the caller says you owe $$$ and if you don’t pay it right away, we have a warrent for your arrest. Grandma may be as honest as the day is long and pure as the driven snow but the call terrifies her.
There’s the scam where Grandma and Grandpa get a call from a young man. He’s their grandson, he went to Mexico and somehow got arrested, and he needs $$$ right away so that he can get out of jail. Who wouldn’t be terrified by the thoughts of a beloved grandson in a Mexican jail?
There’s the scam where “Uncle Edward” gets a call from his nephew. The nephew was on his way to visit his uncle when he was involved in an accident. A child was injured and if the nephew doesn’t pay $$$ right away, he’s going to jail. He doesn’t have $$$, can Uncle Edward send it to him? (In this case, the supposed nephew didn’t know that his Uncle Edward has been known thoughout his life as “Peanut” and so he knew immediately that this was not his nephew calling him.)
There are many, many more. They don’t just prey on people’s “sins” such as greed or porn addiction; they prey on love for family, desire to help others in need, financial hardship, and even respect for the law.
If there’s anything lower than a bottom-feeding mud sucker, that’s where scammers should be classified.
To paraphrase the line about Vegas, what happens under the table, stays under the table.
“Can’t believe someone actually fell for it.”
People fall for these all the time. The IRS calls me all the time from India threatening to arrest me. Much of the time, the problem is old people who think they know everything so they don’t ask anyone for help. They want to keep their secrets.
I spoke to a bunch of old people and I told them “If you think there is a possibility that this call/email might not be legit, call someone. No one calls to warn you that you will be arrested. They just arrest you”.
My wife got the IRS call scam...she handed the phone to me and lead them on for about 30 minutes asking them to verify all the fake info I’ve given them....so I could send them money...
“Who wouldn’t be terrified by the thoughts of a beloved grandson in a Mexican jail?”
And keeping it secret from his parents. If your grandchild gets in trouble, CALL THEIR PARENTS!! Don’t keep secrets from your kids. Geez, what is wrong with people?
Better yet when they call, give them the Gospel.
This is actually a good thing as it opens a window into a class-action lawsuit against Google or Yahoo, or whichever web browser was supposedly used which made pornography so easily accessed. It makes them team players in a scheme that is designed to blackmail those who utilize it’s availability.
They arrested a dozen of those IRS scammers just last week.
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I saw this on a live PD show, where some “girl” in a chat room got the victim to expose himself to her. A week later he gets an email demanding money not to post his naked self on the interwebs.
The cop just said, dont post your parts on the web and you wont have a problem.
There is nothing cops can do when you voluntarily do crap like this, especially a lot of these scammer perps are abroad and therefore not subject to US jurisdiction. The person on the other end of your video chat could be in Nairobi or Somalia or dowtown Chicago. You have no way of knowing beyond an IP address.
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