Swiss teen’s suicide leads investigators to Soweto ‘sextortion scammer’

A breakthrough in a three-year investigation across a range of countries has led to the arrest of a Soweto man believed to be behind an international “sextortion” scheme that caused at least one teen to commit suicide.

The Hawks said this week that to date investigators had linked 52 victims worldwide, including two South Africans, to the man. All those targeted were boys under the age of 18.

Ifeel Simango, 30, appeared in the Protea Glen magistrate’s court on Thursday. He has been charged with extortion and money laundering, and will appear again next week for a bail hearing.

It is unclear whether Simango was working alone or as part of a syndicate, but police have confirmed he has not at this stage been linked to any accomplices.

Authorities say a 17-year-old Swiss boy was among his victims. He hanged himself from a tree behind his home after he was allegedly blackmailed and tormented over intimate images of himself. He left a suicide note describing what he had been through, and its details ultimately led investigators to Soweto.

We know of two local victims, and then there are another 50 all over the world

—  Col Granville Meyer, Hawks spokesperson

The case highlights the global explosion of “sexploitation” cases. The World Economic Forum estimates that about 300-million children a year are victims of technology-facilitated sexual exploitation and abuse. And the number is growing.

“We know of two local victims, and then there are another 50 all over the world,” Hawks spokesperson Col Granville Meyer told the Sunday Times.

For years, money has been crossing the world through the sophisticated scheme, much of it allegedly landing in Simango’s PayPal account.

Meyer said the Hawks’ serious commercial crimes investigators had engaged in a meticulous investigation, joining forces with Swiss federal authorities, Saint-Gall state police, and US homeland security investigators to infiltrate a “highly sophisticated international online extortion, sextortion and money-laundering syndicate”.

He said the arrest was executed on a J50 warrant, meaning investigators had obtained judicial authorisation to go ahead with it on the grounds that evidence linking the suspect to the alleged offence had already been compiled.

The investigation was sparked by the tragic incident in Switzerland, in which the teen was manipulated into sending explicit images of himself via WhatsApp by an individual using a fraudulent profile, Meyer said.

As soon as the perpetrator received the pictures, he began blackmailing the teenager, demanding huge amounts of money from him and threatening to distribute the images on social media. The greatly distressed boy transferred R232,919.38 into a designated PayPal account.

The boy is alleged to have begged the perpetrator not to spread the images and threatened suicide, only for the perpetrator to act as though he had not received the money. He told the boy he did not care if he killed himself and proceeded to distribute the explicit pictures on Instagram, despite his having already been paid off.

“Tragically, the victim succumbed to the immense distress and took his own life in a forest near his home, leaving behind a suicide note detailing the ordeal,” Meyer said.

“Financial analysis by the investigators revealed that the extorted funds were moved from the suspect’s PayPal account into multiple domestic bank accounts. A wider forensic digital investigation has since exposed the global scale of this operation.”

Simango remains in custody. Meyer said it was up to Swiss authorities to extradite him if they wished to charge him with murder.

The state informed the court that forensic investigations were continuing and would likely lead to the adding of more criminal charges, more victims and possibly accomplices. It also said bail would be opposed.

They target boys for money and girls for more content

—  Emma Sadleir, lawyer

Lawyer Emma Sadleir, who specialises in social media law, said sextortion was a huge problem in South Africa. She currently receives “between five and 10 cases a day, sometimes more”. She said the phenomenon was “relentless” and “a new pandemic”.

“It’s like a digital form of rape,” she said. “They target boys for money and girls for more content. Two weeks ago, Snapchat released statistics on how prolific the problem is. They said cases were highly under-reported because of the shame involved, but that they were seeing about 10,000 of them a month.”

Sadleir said the biggest targets for sextortionists were children from conservative and religious families, because the horror they experienced when threatened with public exposure was so intense that they were willing to do whatever the perpetrator told them.

She said the Simango case mirrored the harrowing dynamics of financial sextortion operations that have become a major child-safety and cybercrime problem. There is strong evidence linking some of these cases to suicide and severe self-harm.

The US department of homeland security in Pretoria and Swiss police this week both declined to comment on the case.