Greenwich Police Warn Of 'Sextortion' Incidents

Information from Greenwich Police Department

GREENWICH, CT — The Greenwich Police Department is warning residents about "sextortion" incidents after mostly children and some adults have fallen victim to such scams in recent weeks.

Sextortion is when an individual is contacted by someone they met online on an app, messaging platform, or gaming site, police said. The communications are often non-threatening at first, and the victim believes they are communicating with someone their age.

"The communication then shifts to the suspect claiming to have a revealing picture or video of them and is going to send it to their friends and family if the victim doesn’t send more images, the end goal being extorting the victim for money," police said in a Facebook post Wednesday. "The shame, fear, and confusion victims feel when this crime victimizes them is the main reason they do not ask for help."

The goal of the perpetrator is to emotionally trigger people so that they will "take their bait" and pay up, police said. There are many cases when the perpetrator is bluffing, but they can also obtain explicit images of victims in different ways:

• Through sexting: the perpetrator might have sexually explicit chats with the victim and get them to send images of themselves, often by sending stolen pictures and videos first.
• Taking control of the victim’s webcam: a criminal might trick the victim into downloading a file containing malware.
• Through threats that force the victim to perform sexual acts in front of their webcam: in this case, the sextortion scheme has likely been going on for some time already. This strategy is usually used to obtain further material after the initial blackmail.

Police said children are prone to remaining silent out of embarrassment and fear of getting in trouble with their parents.

Many of the reported cases in Greenwich involve sextortion email campaigns, police said on the town of Greenwich website.

Attackers will draft an email to invoke fear and send it to hundreds of people. In the email, the perpetrator generally claims to have access to the victim’s webcam, police said. They’ll say they used that access to film the victim while engaging in sexual acts.

Alternatively, the perpetrator could threaten to release a list of adult websites visited by the victim.

The perpetrator will demand payment using an untraceable method, such as gift cards and even Bitcoin, police said.

"The sextortion emails are most likely fake. The attacker doesn’t have any pictures or videos of you. Remember that hundreds, if not thousands, of these emails are sent to people. The criminal merely hopes to scare a handful of recipients into submission.," police said.

Police said residents should also be on the lookout for malware in these emails. Perpetrators can include links or attachments in their emails which contain dangerous software used to harm computers or devices.

If you get a sextortion email, police said residents should keep these rules in mind:

• Don’t pay the extorter anything
• Don’t click on any links or attachments
• Don’t engage with the sender.

Click here for more information and learn how to help prevent yourself and your loved ones from falling victim to this crime.

If you are the victim of a sextortion incident or any other scam, contact the Greenwich Police Department at 203-622-8004 and report it.