Katy McGuinness meets a woman whose son was victim of a sextortion scam … here’s what happened
My son Ben is 23 and he’s a student in Dublin. Last summer he signed up to Tinder and got matched with a girl called Claudia, also in Dublin, who was around the same age. They communicated with each other over a period of about seven weeks, but they didn’t ever meet in person. They were getting on well and, after they’d been chatting on Tinder for a couple of weeks, Claudia said she’d love to know more about him, and suggested they share photos of themselves on Snapchat. Apparently the reason people share photos on Snapchat is because the pictures disappear after ten seconds and – I didn’t know this – if you were sending me a picture on Snapchat and I took a screen grab of that, you’d know I was doing it.
So they exchanged loads of pictures and they were getting on great. The pictures were of their bodies but not of their faces, Ben knew enough not to send a picture of his face! And she didn’t either. So she was showing him her sexy body and he was showing off his abs; he goes to the gym a lot and he’s very proud of them! The photos gradually involved fewer and fewer clothes, and then they sent some very intimate photos to one another. At her request, the last one he sent was of him performing a sexual act.
It turned out that she was spying on him on all his social media. She had garnered enough information about him to stalk him on Facebook, and then she started suggesting they send each other videos on Facebook Messenger. He went along with it and then, out of the blue, the day after he uploaded one, he got an Instagram message saying his videos had been hacked. Claudia told him she was going to send them to all his most used contacts on Facebook straight away, saying, “This is what your friend Ben is up to in his spare time!”
At first, he thought it was a prank, and he told her he didn’t believe her. But then she said, “I want $3,000 and I want it straight away. Here are the bank account details and here’s how you do it.” Immediately he responded, “No way.” And straight away she began sending the video to his closest friends via Instagram Message. It went straight to six or seven of them within minutes.
At this point, the communication has gone from Tinder to Snapchat, to Facebook, and then to Facebook Messenger and finally Instagram. Over the course of the process she had used five different social media sites.
Ben got a call from a close friend of his saying, “Look, I’ve just seen something, Ben. Is this serious? Is this actually you?” And it was. Claudia even had his surname and she had messaged his friends using his full name. He nearly died. He tells me now he was in a complete state of shock and panic; he didn’t want to say anything to me (who would want to make that kind of revelation to their mum?) and also because he had no idea how he was going to stop it. Because no faces were shared, he thought it would die down, but within 24 hours, six of his closest circle of friends had called him to say they’d seen it.
And then Claudia came back to him and said, “If you think that’s bad, there’s a few others you’ve sent me that I’m going to send to lots of your other contacts now, people who aren’t your close friends.”
He sweated in his room for a day, literally locked himself away, and then came out and told me. I was shocked, but tried to comfort him as he was so distressed and all I wanted to do was help him. To be honest, I was so upset and shaken. I know nothing about the different social media platforms or the rules or who’s responsible for what. But, I do know there are rules governing the internet and thankfully through work I knew of someone who looks after reputation management in the corporate world and protects people online.
…I blurted out “Listen, my son is in hell, this is what’s happened …”
While I knew this was blackmail and extortion, I also knew that if I popped down to Donnybrook Garda Station and told them what had been going on they wouldn’t have a clue what to do, other than make a note of it. So I rang the person I knew through work – Nicola Byrne of RiskEye – and I blurted out, “Listen, my son is in hell, this is what’s happened …”
I’ll never forget it, she simply said: “Calm down, don’t worry, give me his number, and leave it with me.” Ten seconds later I heard his phone ring. He was in his room, pretty distraught. He said to Nicola, “I’m so embarrassed, how could I be so stupid? Even my mum knows I’m an idiot”. And she said, “Ben, don’t be so hard on yourself. It sounds mad, but this happens all the time.”
When he looked back, he realised he didn’t know Claudia at all. Was she even in Dublin? She could have been in Timbuktu for all he knew. She could have been anyone, anywhere. Nicola later pointed out that’s typical – she certainly knew how to exploit social media to find out all about him. She knew where he lived, which college he went to, what he was studying … everything about him. And she could reach everybody she could hurt him with, including me, his mum. But she didn’t send it to me, she sent it to his friends, the people who mean the world to him. Nicola came to the house. Being a mum herself, she was full of empathy and really calmed him (and me!) down by making him see there was nothing to be ashamed about and this happens all the time. Obviously no one is thinking of extortion when sending those pictures and videos, they think they’re either going to get laid or meet the love of their life. The subscription he paid to Tinder to find somebody essentially turned into his worst nightmare.
Nicola started by documenting and recording exactly what happened and took him through the options. The first thing was platform reporting. She talked him through all the steps and explained about keeping a record of the third party noti? cations, and of all efforts to show the harm that was happening. Facebook didn’t protect him in any way, shape or form; there was no protection going on.
Nicola was able to halt the harm and then, once she had reported “Claudia”, Ben got back to her and said, “I’ve reported you, you won’t be getting any money and everything is going to be removed.”
Nicola helped him to prepare a statement for the Garda. The content was eventually removed by Facebook, but my read of it is that there is no guarantee that some of that content is not still out there and won’t come back to haunt him.
Nicola explained that this is extortion, pure and simple, with somebody setting out to go on Tinder to find somebody, shift them to different platforms, recording them along the way and then coming at them with Instagram, hoping the person will be so embarrassed they will just hand over $3,000. Fair play to Ben, he paid nothing over. But he sweated in his bedroom for nearly a day and a half while the third person called him, the fourth person called him, male and female friends. And none of them had a bloody clue what to do.
There but for the grace of God: it could have been any one of them.
Ben was in touch with Claudia for about seven weeks, so she was clearly playing the long game for the money. Nicola said to me, she probably has six or eight or 20 Bens that she’s doing this to at any given time. It’s an industry. Nobody fully understands the platforms, which is how the Claudias of this world get away with it. Ben thought the Snapchats disappearing after ten seconds protected him, but Claudia was way ahead of him, taking screen grabs. Once she had him, she started spying on Facebook and then suggested they get together on Facebook Messenger. He thought things were going great and that the next step would be meeting in real life. She used five different platforms and then after seven weeks all hell broke loose. And it was all solved within 24 hours once Nicola got involved.
It’s been a hard lesson for Ben to learn, and for me. It’s clear that in a situation like this you need an expert who knows what to do to get harmful content removed from social media. I think it helped Ben that it was someone he didn’t know, someone who was empathetic yet rational about it and had his trust, so he could tell her how bad it got. Once she had the full picture, she supported him and she supported me. She compiled a file of evidence of all the things they had done, so if ever it does come back to haunt him, she has a full record of all the steps taken with each platform and the responses. Some responded better than others.
Thankfully there have been no further repercussions. The amazing thing is that never at any time did Ben have any suspicion that Claudia was not who she said she was. We have talked about it a lot since and he still feels like an idiot. Tellingly, out of his close friend group, six of them were doing similar things with other people, so he was unlucky, it could have happened to any one of them.
Ben was seriously traumatised. He also felt he’d really, really let me down. The thought of somebody else looking at your willy and maybe laughing at it goes right to the core of your dignity. He felt ashamed that he was stupid enough to fall for it, ashamed of the foolishness and of not having suspected. She played him like a violin.
While I tried not to show it, I was devastated as well, because I’m friendly with his friends’ mothers and that was embarrassing for me. But they were all very nice about it because statistically, I suppose, if all his friends are doing similar things, then it could just as easily have been them. He’s doing okay now, but I do think it’s had a big impact on him and his con? dence in dealing with or trusting women. It breaks my heart. I feel so sad for him – he’s a complete dote, quite good-looking, very fit and buff. A perfect target, I suppose.