Sextortion – Joe and Ellie’s story


Joe and Ellie were a married couple who enjoyed life to the full. They ran a youth adventure and counselling camp for young people who had gone off the rails. They had put a lot of hard work into developing their camp as well as all of their life savings and it got results! It was now paying off and parents across America were sending their children to them in the hope that the couple could work their magic and get the kids back on course for a life that would not be full of brushes with the law.


Joe and Ellie employed camp coaches to look after the children and make sure they took apart in the camp’s activities by day, and who also looked after them in the dorms at night. Joe and Ellie lived on the edge of the land the camp occupied and went home at night. When they weren’t working, one of the things that Joe and Ellie liked to do was to attend ‘swinger’ parties. The other couples who joined them on ‘swinger’ nights were people they trusted. Then one day a newcomer to the ‘swinger’ nights asked Joe if he and Ellie would be interested in attending another group for an evening of ‘swinging’. At first Joe was reluctant, but after speaking to Ellie their adventurous spirits got the better of them and they went.


This swinger party that Joe and Ellie went to was definitely several notches up from what they were used to, with S and M and other more extreme sexual activities. The couple enjoyed the evening, and didn’t really take any notice of the fact that they were being filmed. People in their own group often made films so that people could enjoy looking back on what had happened.


No one else from Joe and Ellie’s original ‘swinger’ group has attended the party and at the next party of their regular group the new couple who had invited them, were nowhere to be seen. Joe asked around. No one had seen them. Over the following weeks, Joel and Ellie forgot about the wild night they’d had with the other couple. Joe’s memory, however, was cruelly jogged a month after the party when he got an email containing a film of the night he and Ellie had spent with the new group. At first he was quite pleased to see the film - that was until he read the email. It threatened to distribute the video to all the parents of the children that Joe and Ellie had at the camp. The email pointed out that if the film got out, their business would be finished. Joe knew, although what they did was not illegal, that was true but the amount that the sextorionists were demanding was just beyond his ability to pay. Joe and Ellie had sunk all the money they had into the camp.


Fortunately, Joe had read about Wilsons Detectives and the work that we do with cybercrime, and came straight to us with his problem. It turned out to be quite a difficult case to solve, because the sextortionists has covered their tracks very well. In the end they were no match for the crack cyber crime team at Wilson Detectives and we soon had a fix on them. With the help of the Arizona State police they were soon rounded up and the incriminating material they had, against many people including Joe and Ellie, was seized. In court Wilsons Detectives represented Joe and Ellie and other victims so that they did not have to appear themselves. This is fairly common in this type of case, and we were pleased to be able to preserve Joe and Ellie’s anonymity so that they could rest easy that they were no longer in any danger of having their harmless activity revealed and their business ruined.


If you feel that you may be at risk of sextortion or if you have already been targeted then contact Wilsons Detectives now for free initial chat on wilsonslondon@outlook.com