A man posing as a woman in order to prompt obscene messages from people he met online and blackmail them was arrested Friday, according to Busan Saha-gu Police.
In December 2015, a sexually suggestive offer was posted to controversial online hook-up site and den of sexual deviancies Sora.net.
“Swear at me. I like being talked down to. I’ll sleep with those who send me their naked photos, ‘first-come, first-served.’ If you have any wits you’ll figure out how to reach me,” a post written from an account there read.
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| The woman in this photograph is not related to the contents of this article. (123RF) |
A matching account name was easily found on Korea’s most commonly used mobile messenger KakaoTalk. The profile photo for the account showed an attractive woman.
Members from Sora.net hurriedly inundated the user with vulgar messages and sent personal sexually explicit photos.
They were in for a surprise, however, when the “woman” replied with indignation, “Who is this? I’m reporting you to the police for sexual harassment.”
The KakaoTalk user then extorted sizable sums of money from the flustered men in return for not pressing charges. It was only when one of the men reported the user to police for blackmail that the case took a swerve.
An investigation uncovered the identity of the KakaoTalk user to be a 25-year-old man using the photograph of an attractive woman to bait his victims.
Police said a total of 14 men fell prey to the blackmail scheme, surrendering some 4.6 million won ($4,000).
“Because so many out-of-the-ordinary and perverted things happen on Sora.net, these men failed to take basic precautions to check the identity of who they were talking to,” a representative from the police said, giving caution to other would-be online letharios.
By Lim Jeong-yeo (kaylalim@heraldcorp.com)
