A chain of porch from the Palop managed to deceive 30 people with promises of sex. Victims are essentially older men. They thought they were interacting with “slender women” in all, they will have been extorted in over half a million euros.
A “very organized” network, which operated mostly from the area of Greater Lisbon, will have extorquidothrough computer medium, above half a million euros to more than 30 victimsEssentially men, PJ revealed this Tuesday.
“They falsified Facebook and WhatsApp accounts, and interacted, with the present falsehood, with potential victims,” said the director of the Center Judicial Police (PJ), Avelino Lima.
A PJ stopped 7 peopleaged 20 to 46 years, in various parts of the country, as they are suspected of Crimes of aggravated extortion and laundering of capital.
With false identities, experts in sextortion They asked for intimate and sexual content; And then, they made blackmail and demanded money so as not to publicize them publicly.
At a press conference yesterday afternoon, the director of the PJ of the Center explained that the “Inadable victims” believed they were in a legitimate interactionwith an identified person and eventually exposed, sharing images of intimate and sexual forum.
“From then on, everything was quickly ceased and was advancing for extortion Very aggravated by the values, acting in a pack and effectively harmed national citizens in very high values, ”he added.
According to Avelino Lima, in the records of the Judicial Police will have been identified values over half a million euros.
“Initially they asked for a value to measure also what is the ability of the victim and then, believing the victim who was solved the problem, which was not at all, the values are growing. I can say that One of the victims has a value very close to 200 thousand euros”He described.
Victims are adult men
The organized group, consisting of five men and two womenall come from a nation belonging to African Portuguese -speaking countries (PALOP)operating in Portugal and doing “use of numbers [de telemóvel] with the indicative of this country ”.
“The group was known, there were even among some members familiarity relations and, effectively, took advantage of the financial earnings to dilute them through the financial system and thus also committed, from our perspective and the prosecutor, the crime of laundering capital, for which they are also indicted,” he said.
According to Avelino Lima, in all More than 30 victims are already identified, essentially men, all of which.
No Entanto, a PJ believes that this number may growalso admitting the possibility of the number of network elements also increasing.
“We are talking about a group of authors who lived exclusively from this. This is a very lucrative criminal activity, because the necessary resources are what we know and, effectively, the earnings are very high: it is a mass diffusion crime of pursuit of potential victims, ”he said.
To journalists, he said that “often” The victims thought they were “talking to slender and very interesting womenfrom the perspective of what the social relationship and the perspective of relations between men and women is.
The police operation, which led to the detention of five men and two women, was held today in Albufeira, Almada, Aveiro, Moita, Montijo, Setúbal and Sintra14 home searches and non -home searches are performed.
The investigation began in February, with the first complaint of this group to take place in Coimbra.
