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The number of victims of sextortion being reported in the UK is on the rise, says the BBC on Thursday, quoting the National Crime Agency (NCA), a British law enforcement department.
According to figures provided by the agency, 1,304 cases were reported in 2017 as opposed to 428 in 2015.
Sextortion is a form of blackmailing in which sexual information or images are used to extort sexual favors from social media users. Joanne Bockon, a cyber Protect officer, told the BBC that «it’s organized crime groups in the Philippines, Morocco» that mostly do that. «Their job will be to bring cash in from victims all around the world», sayd Bockon.
Victims are added on social media by men, pretending to be girls, secretly recorded after accepting to carry out sex acts, and then blackmailed for money.
Sextortion in Oued Zem
In previous reports, the BBC revealed that most of the victims are blackmailed by Moroccan scammers operating in Oued Zem, a small city in the Beni Mellal-Kherigba region. «The Oued Zem scammers trawl Facebook for victims, and as soon as a man answers a video call they activate software that shows the victims a pre-recorded of a girl downloaded from a porn webcam», wrote the media after speaking to a Moroccan scammer in the city.
«We ask him to take off his clothes and to do obscene gestures», he said, explaining that many young men in the city live on the practice.
«When we've got the recording we upload it to YouTube and send it to him in a private message. That's when the threatening starts. We spend 20 minutes chatting, 20 minutes for the video, and 20 minutes threatening - threatening and negotiating. They all pay».
In the UK, NCA stressed that «tens of thousands of people, mainly young men, are putting themselves at risk of sextortion».
However, the numbers provided by the agency represent only the tip of the ice berg. NCA believes that the true number of sextortion victims is higher than the figures reported.
In 2016, Wayne May who manages an online community, Scam Survivors, told the BBC that about «a third of all the scams originate in Morocco».
The National Crime Agency is now trying to help British men avoid scammers, report sextortion and know who is blackmailing them. The agency has even made a video to show how easy it is to be trapped by scammers and to raise awareness among internet users.
