7 fall in cybersex den raid in Gingoog City

INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – Authorities on Wednesday said they were investigating the extent of the operation of a group running a cybersex den following a raid in Gingoog City on Monday.

Armed with a search warrant issued by a local judge, operatives from the Gingoog police, a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team, and Anti-Cyber Crime Group-10 (ACG-10) agents, raided an apartment in Barangay 13 in Gingoog, which led to the arrest of seven persons.

Apprehended were Roel Ruiz, Gerald Pinol, Robert Higana, Geovani Mandin, Gener Pacot, Hermenegildo Escano, and an unidentified woman.

Confiscated inside the apartment were seven laptops, four thumb drives, 12 mobile phones, two pocket wifi devices, a subscriber identity module (SIM) card, two ATM cards, two modems, P7,000 in cash and other items.

In a phone interview Wednesday noon, Supt. Roel Lamiing, Gingoog city police director, said the modus operandi of the male suspects would include enticing their prospective victims, mostly foreign nationals, by creating fake social media accounts and posing as women.

Lamiing said the suspects would establish a relationship with the foreigners and after being virtually intimate with them, would engage them in online sex and pornography.

The suspects will then record the victims doing sexual acts and post these videos on the internet.

“They (suspects) will use these videos to extort money from the victims,” he said, adding that the payment demanded by the perpetrators varied.

In some instances, they would ask for P60,000, in others, P100,000. Payments from outside the country are made through money couriers.

Lamiing said they still had to determine the nationalities of the victims.

He added they were digging deeper into the group’s operation to find out who finances the suspects.

The suspects will be facing charges for violation of RA 10175 or the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, he said. CBB