Cybercrime

The arrest of several men involved in a sextortion case in Japan made headlines in April of last year. Japanese authorities discovered that 22 victims had deposited 3,500,000 yen (30,000 US dollars) into a bank account controlled by the criminals. It has been reported that the attackers controlled more accounts, so it is likely that the amount of money stolen by the group was significantly higher. While sextortion exists in many forms, this particular case involved malicious Android apps that were used to commit online extortion.  Sextortion using Android apps is prevalent in Asian countries, particularly South Korea and Japan, and appears to have surfaced sometime around 2013. Multiple criminal groups may be using this tactic to extort money from their victims.

Online criminal group uses Android app for sextortion