On Wednesday, May 27, investigators from the Cybercrime Team in North Holland, led by the district attorney, arrested an 18-year-old Vlaardingen resident on suspicion of phishing, hacking Snapchat accounts and sextortion, a form of extortion. The suspect was detained Wednesday for further investigation and will be arraigned before the magistrate on Friday.
Since April 20 this year, the North Holland Cyber Crime Team has been faced with an increasing number of reports from mostly young victims whose Snapchat account had been hacked. Detectives launched an investigation. The declarants turned out to be extorted after the accounts were hacked. Below is a brief account of the hacker's modus operandi.
Snapchat account holders were enticed to click on a link, supposedly to see if they were in a corona-infected area. If that link was clicked, then the Snapchat account had to be logged in again. That link then turned out to be a phishing link, giving the hacker access to the victim's entire account. This was followed by a form of sextortion. For example, the hacker threatened to distribute private photos (sexual or otherwise) on the Internet or he threatened never to return the Snapchat account to the victim if payment was not made (with money or in bitcoins) or if the victim did not send a nude photo of herself. In this case, the victims known to the police did not comply with the hacker's demands, as far as we know. In several cases, the hacker forwarded private photos to contacts of the victims to reinforce his threat.
More than 20 victims are currently known to the police. All of these victims live in North Holland. It is known that some of them are very affected by this type of crime. The criminal investigation department is satisfied with this development in the investigation and is working hard on the case.
On Wednesday, the Cyber Crime Team conducted a search of the suspect's home in Vlaardingen in the presence of a magistrate judge. During the search, various digital data carriers such as phones, laptops and computers were seized.
