The National Police has carried out Operation TEKNON, recently identifying a Nigerian criminal organization dedicated to extorting Spanish citizens. Its members allegedly created fake profiles with photos of attractive women on social networks and contacted men who, after generating a certain degree of trust, requested intimate photos and videos and then threatened to publicly disseminate all sexual content if they did not receive immediate payment.
The National Police has identified several members of a criminal organization based in Nigeria, which was dedicated to extorting Spanish citizens using the "sextortion" technique.
Location of potential victims
According to the Police, the modus operandi used by the members of the organization was to create fake profiles with photographs of attractive women on various social networks and try to contact men, with whom they start conversations to generate a certain degree of trust. After achieving their first objective, they propose to continue the conversations on a more opaque network that allows the sending of photographs and videos of sexual content, thus initiating the exchange of files. Once in possession of the compromising images, the threats to the victims begin.
After informing them that they know all their contacts (which they have previously extracted from their social networks), they demand the payment of money to avoid publicly disseminating the files or even being reported to the authorities for pedophilia (defining themselves as minors).
In some cases, the victims make the payments to prevent their intimate images from being disclosed. In others, in which they do not have the economic capacity to make the disbursement, they are forced to work for the organization participating as mules (they receive payments from other victims and after converting them into cryptocurrencies they send them to wallets belonging to the criminal organization), becoming collaborators of the initial crime and possibly incurring another crime of money laundering.
Tracing the final destination of illicit funds
The Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of the National Police, through applications specialized in tracking crypto assets, has been able to locate the final destination of the illicitly displaced funds, being in all cases wallets owned by individuals of Nigerian nationality between 20 and 35 years old.
Complaints have been located from other victims in Albacete, Alicante, Cáceres, Gijón, Valladolid, A Coruña and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
Safety tips
- Keep in mind that when you accept friend requests from people you don't know, their profiles may not be real.
- Turn off or block the cameras when you are not intentionally using them.
- Every time a photograph and video leaves our electronic device, we lose control over it.
- If you are a victim, you must collect as much information as possible and contact the National Police as soon as possible.
- If you receive an intimate video of another person, you should not share it, as you could incur a crime.
