Man sentenced to jail for blackmailing porn users

A Swedish man was on Monday sentenced to two and a half years in jail for extortion after he attempted to blackmail thousands of porn site users by threatening to publish their names.

Dennies Pettersson, 42, who had acquired the Swedish rights for streaming videos on a foreign website, sent bills to people he claimed had watched the clips, demanding payment ranging from tens to hundreds of euros between 2012 and 2013.

“The district court has determined that the plaintiffs were subjected to aggravated extortion in the cases where it is proven that they received a bill of this kind,” a district court in Malmo, southern Sweden, said in a statement.

Two accomplices were given suspended terms while another three were given prison sentences ranging from 12 to 18 months.

Pettersson told the regional daily Sydsvenskan in 2013 that he had earned millions of kronor (hundreds of thousands of Kenya shillings) legally through the newerotica.mobi website from users who had agreed to the prices mentioned in its terms and conditions.

Although users never left their contact details on the site, he was able to trace them through a list of IP addresses he bought from Sweden’s largest internet service provider.