A band that carried out sexual extortion from the Buenos Aires prisons of Sierra Chica and Merlo was dismantled following the complaints of the victims, most of whom were minors. Raids were conducted at the cells occupied by the leaders in both locations, and phones and notes were seized. The Special Technological Investigations Division of the Buenos Aires Police, with the approval of the UFIJ N°8 of Berazategui, led by Prosecutor Ernesto Daniel Ichazo and Bianca Grivetto, carried out two raids at the penitentiary units of Sierra Chica and Merlo as part of an investigation into 'sextortion'. The case, as confirmed to the Argentine News Agency, began after several complaints from women who were victims of sexual scams, leading to the involvement of the Buenos Aires Police to use technological analysis to identify those responsible for these crimes. The victims, many of them minors, 'were contacted by criminals through social networks such as Instagram or TikTok and received false job offers as lingerie models'. Through the investigation, it was determined that one of the inmates posed as a fashion producer and asked the women to take photos or film themselves under the pretext of being able to try on sizes. In some cases, they asked for money to create 'portfolios' with the photos to show to other production companies. 'Once the scammers obtained the photographic material, they forced the victims to make video calls and perform sexual acts under the threat of sending their intimate photos to family members or schoolmates', they detailed. In other cases, it was learned that using those photos, they created fake profiles on social networks to attract men, whom they then contacted by phone, pretending to be police officers, accusing them of having had obscene conversations with minors, and asking for money in exchange for not filing the corresponding complaints. They also used the images to fraudulently offer these women as supposed prostitutes. The operations focused on the leader of the band, who is imprisoned in the Sierra Chica jail, and his accomplice, who is serving a sentence in the Merlo Penitentiary Unit. This was the second blow against the head of said organization, who already had a record for this type of intramural crime while imprisoned in Unit N°1 of Lisandro Olmos. 'On that occasion, the criminal network had the complicity of their partners, who were in charge of making their bank accounts available to collect the extortions and then transferred them to an account in the name of the main suspect', the authorities described.
