Looking for love on Facebook, he found blackmailers instead

He met a woman on Facebook and ended up in an extortion racket that almost left him destitute. This is the story of a 40-year-old man from Arluno, who, thanks to the Carabinieri, managed to save himself from a couple from Saronno, who had caught him in a trap that he could not get out of. The man, who is separated, met a woman on Facebook in December 2012, and started to chat online with her every day, even exchanging telephone numbers. They eventually began to text each other, also sending very explicit messages, without having actually met in person. The clerk, from Arluno, did not suspect that behind those messages there was a couple, who were playing with him and his feelings. Suddenly, the trap closed; after a short time, the man received a phone call from the number of the alleged new friend, but the voice on the line was not that of the beloved woman, but a man’s. “The woman you’ve been chatting with is actually my daughter, a 13-year-old girl,” is what he was told.

The trap had sprung and from that moment on he kept receiving threats and blackmail demands, which he paid regularly, in different places, to the man and his wife, to a total of almost €30,000. The victim was frightened by the continual threats from the unscrupulous couple. “We’ll tell your employer everything,” they said. Or even worse: “We’ll tell everyone you’re a paedophile.” In fact, there was no girl, it was all a fraud created by a married couple, a 42-year-old man and a 50-year-old woman, who were both unemployed. Fed up with the continual demands, the victim eventually decided to go to the Carabinieri in Arluno, who accompanied him to the last appointment, when he should have paid his blackmailers €1000 in cash; as the money was being handed over, the Carabinieri arrested the two criminals for extorsion. They were then taken to San Vittore Prison, in Milan, where their arrest was confirmed by the investigating magistrate.