Conflict Incident Report

The Internal Security Forces said it has arrested a man suspected of hacking into personal Facebook accounts for the purposes of so-called sextortion and advertising prostitution, according to a statement released Sunday.

The ISF was alerted to the case after receiving a complaint to its official Facebook page, which said that explicit photos were being shared and prostitution was being advertised through multiple Facebook accounts.

The ISF’s Anti-Cybercrimes Bureau located a man suspected of hacking into the accounts, identifying him as Syrian national Aa.Y., born in 1994. He was arrested Wednesday in Zahle’s Ali al-Nahri.

According to the ISF statement, Aa.Y confessed to the crime.

He told investigators that he would find his victims by first checking to see if the random Lebanese cell phone numbers he came up with were linked to a Gmail account. He would try to log into the Gmail account using random passwords, and if he succeeded, he would log into the user’s Facebook through their Gmail credentials.

Once inside the Facebook account, he would then search the victim’s private messages for explicit photos. If he was able to find such photos, he would contact the victim using a fake number and demand money in exchange for not publishing the photos.

If he was unable to find explicit photos with which to extort his victim, Aa.Y. would instead publish posts on their profile advertising prostitution along with his phone number.

When receiving the phone calls, Aa.Y. would use the Cash In app – which enables people to charge incoming callers an extra fee per minute – at a rate of $3 per minute.