KUALA LUMPUR: He had read about such scams in the papers; beautiful women coaxing lustful men to strip naked on online chats and then blackmailing them.
Yet, John Tan (not his real name) could not resist going au naturale when a seemingly gorgeous woman persuaded him to do it on Skype.
That supposedly Filipina beauty turned out to be an African man, who is now demanding RM3,000 and threatening that he would leak Tan’s nude video online.
“I knew there were cases like this and I suspected the girl might be fake. But when I saw how beautiful ‘she’ was ... I couldn’t resist,” said the 30-year-old designer, hiding his face behind large dark glasses at a press conference called by MCA public services and complaints department chief Datuk Seri Michael Chong here yesterday.
Claiming it was the first time he had stripped for another person on the Internet, Tan said he first chatted with the so-called Sabrina Leung, who added him on her Facebook page on Nov 6.
Their entire online escapade, from “friend request” to being in the buff took only 13 minutes.
“She said she worked at a hotel in Dubai and that she was coming to Malaysia to meet her relatives and I could see her then.
“Then she asked me to go on Skype with her and get naked. She asked me to take off my clothes too. I did because she said she was feeling sad and bored,” Tan said.
The next day, “Sabrina” messaged him with a YouTube link to a video of him naked and demanded RM3,000 to be banked into a Western Union account.
He said “Sabrina” also showed Tan links to Facebook profiles belonging to his family, friends, co-workers and girlfriend, threatening to send the video to them if he did not comply.
Chong, who lamented that people were still falling for such scams, said checks showed that the bank account belonged to a Filipina while the YouTube channel hosting Tan’s nude video belonged to a man in French Guiana.
The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has pulled down the video.
Chong said the department had received 15 reports since last year, with up to RM120,000 extorted from victims including some being driven to loan sharks and even contemplating suicide to escape blackmail.
“Don’t be naive like this man,” said Chong. “If you have fallen for this, my advice is not to pay and come to me or lodge a police report.”
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