Egyptian Youth bags 7 Years Imprisonment for blackmailing 12 girls onlineA criminal court in Egypt’s Assiut governorate has sentenced a young male to seven years in prison on Sunday for blackmailing 12 girls, demanding illicit relationships with them and threatening them through social media with defamation after fabricating sexually explicit photos.
The accused reportedly blackmailed 12 girls from Assiut, Alexandria, Cairo and Giza by sending them sexually explicit messages through WhatsApp and Facebook.
Moreover, he harassed them, demanding to have illicit relationships with them with the intent of obtaining sexual benefit.
The investigations began after the General Department of Information Technology at the Ministry of Interior received several reports from girls who claimed they had been blackmailed by a person through WhatsApp and Facebook, who threatened them with fabricated pictures of themselves on bodies of naked women.
The technical investigations conducted by the department found that the phone numbers and Facebook account responsible for the blackmail attempts belonged to the accused, “Ahmed H.M,” a resident of Abnoub city in Assiut.
Egypt’s penal code criminalises extortion, threats and violation of private life. In addition, Egypt’s data protection law criminalises these crimes on the internet.
In 2018 the anti-cyber and information technology crimes law was amended, allowing a blackmailer who hacks the private information of any person to be imprisoned for not less than two years and not more than five years instead of six months in jail and/or a fine not less than EGP 50,000 and not more than EGP 100,00.
