The thriller boss of a publicly traded firm was caught up in a catfishing and extortion scheme involving raunchy images and messages, the feds revealed on Thursday.
Prosecutors say that Sakoya Blackwood, a 34-year-old Bronx girl arrested on Wednesday, used “a number of on-line identities” to focus on rich and highly effective males in an alleged scheme that started final March. Blackwood additionally used the aliases “Koya Blackwood Fews” and “Lila Cohen” within the on-line interplay.
Blackwood allegedly “threatened to launch sexually express images of, and sexually express communications involving, a selected particular person who's the Chief Government Officer of a publicly traded firm,” court docket paperwork mentioned.
The feds unsealed the indictment in Manhattan federal court docket on Wednesday however withheld the identify of the CEO focused within the scheme, in addition to the identify of the general public firm the chief leads.
Blackwood purportedly “focused a number of different victims” within the scheme. She is accused of utilizing “threats of financial and reputational hurt” to extract funds from the victims.
“Nobody ought to need to concern public humiliation and monetary loss from the discharge of non-public, non-public info,” US Lawyer Damian Williams mentioned in an announcement. “As alleged, Sakoya Blackwood created that very concern and sought to capitalize on it for her personal private acquire.”
“I commend the sufferer for reporting this alleged felony exercise and encourage anybody else who believes they could have been a sufferer of this scheme to contact the FBI,” Williams added.
Blackwood faces a number of federal expenses within the case, together with one depend of constructing interstate communications with intent to extort, one depend of cyberstalking and one depend of extortion. The costs may lead to a most sentence of 27 years in jail.
“Most individuals hope for a private human connection in life, and rip-off artists twist that need into illicit schemes to steal greater than hearts,” FBI Assistant Director Michael J. Driscoll mentioned. “We imagine Blackwood used ways we allege on this indictment to blackmail and extort cash from different victims.”
A “catfish” is somebody who develops a pretend identification to deceive others on-line, typically for nefarious functions.
One well-known “catfishing” case concerned ex-College of Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o, who was the sufferer of an elaborate hoax that was just lately chronicled in a Netflix documentary titled “Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist.”
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