More than 530 people in Hong Kong, many aged between 20 and 30, have fallen victim to the scam since the beginning of last year, according to Chief Inspector Louis Kwan, from the Chinese territory’s police commercial crime bureau.
Kwan said Hong Kong victims had paid up to $15,000 in desperate attempts to keep the sexually compromising material private.
But, once hooked, the victims sometimes found they could not escape.
Kwan said some victims paid up to three times before going to the police, “when they realised they could no longer afford to continue paying”.
However, authorities emphasised the Philippines was not the hub of the global “sextortion” scams, only that the current investigation had focused on the Southeast Asian nation.
“These crimes are not limited to any one country and nor are the victims. That’s why international cooperation in investigating these crimes is essential,” Interpol’s Virmani said.
Purisima said authorities from the United States, Hong Kong, Interpol, Scotland, Singapore and Australia last year established “Operation Strikeback”, which led to the 58 arrests.
“Operation Strikeback highlights international cooperation and coordination in dealing with cybercrime,” Purisima said.
The joint taskforce was created at an Interpol meeting to tackle the “growing number of sextortion victims in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, the United Kingdom and the United States”, according to Purisima.
He said the taskforce was also focused on potential victims in Australia, South Korea and Malaysia, although other authorities at the press conference also said that people anywhere in the world with Internet access could be targeted.
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