Sextortion Ring in Morocco Targets Celebrities and Public Figures

The Hervé Renard case, even if it has helped to reveal this new form of internet fraud, is just one case among many others. These hundreds of scammers in the city of Oued Zem have managed to blackmail stars of different nationalities on whom they have set their sights, reports Al Akhbar.

With their victims, these young people pose as young women, engage in conversation that takes a much more torrid turn over the days. The victim, unaware of the trap, is filmed in the nude. As soon as the video is recorded, they send it to the victim, demanding the payment of a large sum of money, usually in foreign currency, at the risk of posting it on social networks.

Very recently, an Egyptian Islamic preacher also fell into the trap with some images of young girls in the nude. He played along by spending a steamy night with a stranger before realizing the scam. Like the other victims, he had to buy the silence of this young person with banknotes.

A Kuwaiti artist also fell for the bait by chatting with a fake profile of a young dancer looking for jobs. The artist demanded the destruction of the computer before paying up. His blackmailer bought a secondhand computer that he set on fire before sending him the video. Unfortunately, the Kuwaiti artist, a celebrity, committed suicide after explaining his act in a moving letter to his family who filed a complaint at the Kuwaiti embassy in Rabat.

Other victims, including a senior official from the Jordanian Ministry of Culture, a Palestinian businessman and even a Houthi leader in Yemen, have been scammed by these young people from Oued Zem. Among the ranks of these young scammers that the police manage to arrest, only a few are tried and convicted. As for the scammers of coach Hervé Renard, they received a prison sentence with fines.