We experienced that suspects, particularly from Bulgaria, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Turkey, and Ukraine, have committed this crime in recent years. And similar romance scams via Whatsapp and other instant messaging applications such as Tango, Viber etc. In addition to the cyber crimes committed via Skype (skype scam), another popular type of cybercrimes is blackmail over videos and webcam. Their ultimate aim is to push the victim to pay money without giving him a chance to think about what he can do. Sometimes they even say they will publish the video on the internet with some unpleasant scenarios, like child abuse…Skype scams are serious crimes, and the suspects of this crime mainly focus on pressurizing the victim. Skype BlackmailĪfter recording the video, the suspect shows it to the victim, then he threatens him by publishing the video on the internet, or sending the video to his family, friends, or boss. When the victim takes his clothes off and even does the things that the suspect asks him to do, his video is recorded by the suspect and at that time blackmail starts. Because the victim sees a girl taking her clothes off, he feels comfortable with doing the same thing and he thinks he can do the same thing self-confidently. After the strip video show, the suspect says, the victim should do the same thing. After talking to the victim for a while, they invite the victim to Skype App to talk more, and after talking on Skype for some time, the suspect makes the victims watch a video of a woman taking her clothes off.

Subsequently, when they make sure that they have found a “wealthy victim” they start to communicate with the victim by sending a “hello” message. Therefore, they try to find wealthy victims by checking internet profiles on social media websites such as Facebook, Instagram or Linkedin.

They never choose a victim randomly, instead, they seek for a victim who looks wealthy and has an upscale good job like an engineer, pilot, architect or businessman. They generally target male victims and because of that, they create fake female profiles on the internet and social media sites with fake photos and false information. We can say this crime is mainly committed on the internet by people particularly from Morocco, Ivory Coast, Philippines and as well as Turkey. As an experienced cyber law expert and lawyer I have observed a specific type of blackmail, which is called as “ webcam blackmail“, “ Skype blackmail“, “ Skype scams” or “sextortion” for the last decade.

Moroccan whatsapp scams