Cyber crime is a major law and order issue across the world and people being duped by online con artists that includes blackmailing is rampant. From children being targeted by sex offenders to young men being blackmailed for their online sex escapades, no one is safe from predators.
But a town in Morocco seems to have built an industry on this as three thousand people there are involved in blackmailing men for money after tricking them into performing lewd acts on camera. The town called Oued Zem is located barely 200 kms from Casablanca and is called the world’s “sextortion capital”.
The victims are lured by IDs of women and are then asked to go nude and perform acts on cam. These are then used to extort money from them as close to Rs 65000 is demanded in return for deleting the video clip.
There have been several crackdowns by the Moroccan government, and most of the arrests were made from Oued Zem. The country has also set up cyber crime units as sextortion cases reported have gone up by almost a thousand since 2015.
Thousands are suspected to have been targeted by these gangs without contacting the authorities, as millions are said to have been extorted.
