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Conflict Incident Report
ISF arrests Lebanese extortionist targeting women
A young man accused of blackmailing women by threatening to share photos of them on Facebook and the online marketplace OLX was arrested by the Internal Security Forces, an ISF statement reported.
M. Sh., a Lebanese national born in 1994, was taken into custody after a media report claimed a man attempted to blackmail a woman using the popular chat app WhatsApp, the statement said. The ISF added that according to the report, the woman didn’t respond to certain requests, prompting the suspect to share the woman’s photo and number with the caption: “A girl who needs to work at a nightclub.”
As a result of the post, the statement added, the woman received several phone calls from strangers asking “to get to know her.”
“As a result of investigations on M. Sh.’s accounts, it turned out that he had contacted several people with the aim of blackmailing them and threatening to post their photos on Facebook and OLX,” the ISF said. “The suspect was contacted Monday by the ISF’s Anti-Cybercrime and Intellectual Property Rights Bureau ... and he confessed.”
The statement noted that M. Sh. had a criminal record related to similar offenses, where he had persuaded women to share compromising photos before blackmailing the victims.
The ISF reiterated a call for Lebanese citizens and residents to refrain from taking photos or filming themselves in “an inappropriate manner” so as to avoid falling victim to such cr