The National Police has arrested in Azkoitia (Guipúzcoa) a 26-year-old woman to whom 311 ‘sextortions’ are attributed to men over the Internet after an operation started in Malaga. With enormous expertise and few resources, basically a smartphone with a photo montage ‘app’ and a technological selfie lighting device, the suspect, who was acting alone, had created a fictitious image of herself, presenting herself on social networks with a unreal body, work of Artificial Intelligence.
After gaining the trust of the men who contacted her and, After extracting compromising images of a sexual nature from them, he threatened to spread such content to family members. and known if they did not make a series of payments through bank transfers, according to police sources.
After the arrest of the suspect, The cyber agents confirmed that she had extorted at least three hundred men in much of the country. The number of victims is deduced directly from the payments made to the bank accounts of the person under investigation, with concepts such as “send by agreement to stop threat” or “delete, please” appearing in the movements. However, the majority of victims have not reported the incidents for various personal reasons.
The ‘Curves’ operation, lcarried out jointly by agents assigned to the Cybercrime Section of the Provincial Police Station of Malaga and their counterparts from the Provincial Judicial Police Brigade in San Sebastián, began precisely after the first complaints were filed for ‘sextortion’ in such cities, and deductions , after the first procedures, a cluster of coincidences that led to the same reported profile.
Precisely, one of the accounts under suspicion on a well-known social network showed a user with more than 13,000 followerswhich reflected, in the opinion of the researchers, an intense advertising activity to recruit and establish contacts with men.
Furthermore, the profile used as a “hook” was maintained over time, with some of the complainants claiming to have been “direct” with the extortionist on the Internet. Continuing with the investigations, focused both on the follow the money trail paid by the victims as in the analysis of the social media accounts, it was possible to identify the person who would be behind them, a 26-year-old woman.
The image of the identified person was similar, in terms of age and facial features, to the one that appeared in the reported profiles, but not the rest of your body figuresubject to a great transformation through the use of artificial intelligence.
Finally, once sufficient evidence was obtained regarding the implication of the investigated person in the events, His arrest was made and his home was also entered and searched. No sophisticated computer equipment was found in the house, but rather a smartphone with several installed graphic retouching apps based on artificial intelligence and a tripod with a light ring for self-recording.
In a first analysis of the telephone tapped on the detainee, the accounts used by her on a well-known social network to contact victims, in addition to the images that she sent as a claim, corroborating that she was indeed the author of the events.
Mobile phone dump
Subsequently, a data dump from the seized terminal was carried out at the police station. From the analysis of 3,500 conversations through different messaging applications and social networksan evolution over time of the modus operandi used by the extortionist could be determined.
Initially, I would pretend to be a prostituteurging men to hire their services in advance, after payment via bizum, although without ever showing up at the agreed upon location. Later, he would encourage his followers to join a private channel with clear sexual content, through an instant messaging application, also requiring payment, turning out to be another scam.
Ultimately, The investigation focused on ‘sextortion’, gaining the trust of the victims and getting them to send him intimate images with which he subsequently extorted them under the threat of spreading them in his personal environment.
In parallel, the financial means with which the investigated person obtained her illicit income was analyzed, an account into which the victims of extortion deposited the money, resulting in eight months of investigation.He earned a total of 16,300 euros with his illicit business.