After six months of intense investigation and intelligence gathering, the police have nabbed one person reported to have been engaged in Cyber fraud for the past five years.
The suspect, Anderson Ofosuhene Anim, operator of a website known as ‘Empressleak’ and his accomplices use this site for the publication of child pornographic and adult sexual content and blackmails its victim with it.
Addressing a press conference at the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Ghana Police Service yesterday, COP/Mr Isaac Ken Yeboah, Director-General, CID said the suspect was busted on July 1 at his residence in Osino in the Eastern region.
He is currently on remand and would reappear before court on August 19 for further action to be taken against him.
He said his accomplices, who are currently on the run, will be fished out by the police soon and brought to book.
Mr Yeboah indicated that the team ceased all the digital devices the perpetrator used in committing the crime and it will be subjected to forensic examination to retrieve evidence to assist investigations.
He also said that the website used to perpetuate this crime is being hosted in the United States and management is in talk with the UK team to close down the site.
Mr Yeboah noted that the arrest was a collaborative effort of the Cyber Crime Unit of the CID and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).
Also present at the meeting were the Minister of Communication, Mrs Ursula Owusu Ekuful, Deputy Minister of Communication in charge of Cyber Security, Mr Alexander Kojo Kom Abban, A.C.P/ Dr Gustav Yankson, Director, Cyber Crime Unit and others.
Giving a detailed account of how the suspect was nabbed, Mr Yeboah narrated that since the establishment of the Cybercrime Unit in 2015, it has recorded lots of cases related to obscenity, nude picture blackmail and child pornography.
However, cases relating to nude picture blackmail have ranked number three in the frequently reported cases to the Cybercrime Unit of the CID headquarters year on year, he said.
He observed that Empressleak website had become the preferred medium by the perpetrators of these acts over the last five years.
This website allows the general Public to post nude pictures/ videos of others on their website and demand ransom ranging from 500 to 2000 Ghana Cedis via mobile money, before they are removed.
He indicated that the cybercrime/cybersecurity incident reporting Point of Contact (POC) established within the National Cyber Security Centre of the Ministry of Communication in the month of October 2019 and also observed similar trend of cases reported to their outfit.
In January 2019, the Cybercrime Unit of the CID headquarters, in collaboration with the National Cyber Security Centre decided to mount an operation to have the operators of this website arrested and after 6 months of intense investigation and intelligence gathering, the team finally located the administrator of the website.
Mr Yeboah encouraged all persons who have fallen victim to such crimes to report to the Cybercrime Unit to assist with investigations and also cautioned all who are fond of taking nude picture/videos to desist from such acts, as they can easily be lost to people who would use it to blackmail them.
The Minister of Communication, while addressing the media, also observed that since the operationalisation of the POC, the NCSC has retrieved countless cybercrime incident reports from the public, key among them being non-consensual intimate images, online impersonation, online fraud, malware attacks, online blackmail and website defacement.
She indicated that the distribution of sexual images of individuals are gradually becoming a canker in the Ghana cyber space and observed that victims have lose about GHC420,000 to perpetrators of this crime annually through ransoms paid to stop them from having their pictures/videos published.
She, therefore, cautioned people to desist from uploading and sharing their nude pictures on social media.
The post Cyber blackmailer grabbed appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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