Winnipeg police have arrested a man in a major sexual extortion case and investigators say there could be more victims overseas.
In January police received a report from a man in his 20s that he shared intimate photos of himself online to who he thought was a young woman. After sending them, the online persona threatened to distribute the images unless he sent money.
A month later, through investigation police found three more victims and charged 21-year-old Tongun Justin Tongun with four counts of extortion.
Sgt. Trevor Thompson from the Financial Crime Unit said had the first victim not reported, investigators likely wouldn’t be able to connect the dots with other reports across the country.
“As you do the backwards work you almost have to reverse engineer the investigation that you’re doing to locate these victims, and it’s problematic when they haven’t reported,” he said.
Six more victims under the age of 30 were identified in Manitoba, Alberta, Ontario and PEI and Tongun was charged with six additional counts of extortion.
He was released on an undertaking.
Stephen Sauer, director of Cybertip.ca, said most victims don’t report sextortion crimes for fear of embarrassment within their network of family and friends.
“(Victims) think it’s in the context of a closed relationship and then there’s threats to share that with a wider network of friends…there’s a huge emotional impact,” he told reporters at a Wednesday news conference.
Sauer said he wants to see legislation regulating phone apps which kids can access to prevent further crimes from occurring.
Legislation could look like compelling companies to report instances of extortion or inappropriate encounters between adults and minors.
“They don’t have appropriate systems in place from mitigating these cases,” he said, adding kids’ toys have regulations but online spaces don’t.
Sauer said Cybertip has received 3,400 reports from alleged victims of sextortion over the last 12 months, or 11 victims per day.
However, Sauer and Thompson both agree the stats are skewed due to underreporting of such cases by victims.
“The true scale of the problem is much greater than what these numbers suggest,” Sauer said.
“The importance of reporting cannot be understated,” Thompson added.
The investigation is ongoing.