Swedes Hit By Porn Bills, Blackmailed Into Paying

There are fakes and blackmails.

You combine this two, add Porn into the mix, there you have it.

The Swedes have been hit by Porn Bills, that too fake Bills at that.

They were also warned  that if they do not pay up, there surfing details would be made Public.

Police in Blekinge, south Sweden, have received over 3,000 reports about the company’s fake porn surfing bills from people around the country.

The invoices threaten to expose the recipients as porn surfers if they don’t pay.

The company behind the invoices in on the warning list of the Swedish Trade Federation (Svensk Handels).

“This is a form of blackmail. They send an SMS to them claiming they’ve been porn surfing and write something like ‘if you don’t pay we’re going to expose you as a porn surfer on our website’,” Per Geijer, head of security at the trade federation, told the TT news agency.

Billy Ingemarsson, head of the Blekinge police’s IT crimes unit, told Sveriges Radio (SR) the current wave of complaints is the highest number of reports that have been filed with the Blekinge police, which may need to call in extra staff to deal with the case.

“We’re getting between 15 and 25 reports every day,” he told the broadcaster.

Ingemarsson is leading the investigation and said the company may be prosecuted over fraud, attempted blackmail and crimes against the Debt Recovery Act.”

http://www.thelocal.se/46752/20130315/#.UUWl2BdTCXc

If the companies blackmail this way, what is the way out?

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This is not most people’s idea of a good time—getting bombarded with messages from porn producers seeking payment for nonexistent downloads.

Alison Frankel, who writes for Thomson Reuters, recently wrote anarticle about Jennifer Barker, a Louisville, Kentucky woman who says she never watched a bunch of movies she’s been billed for.

According to the article, she’s “one of tens of thousands people who’ve received settlement demands from porn movie producers and their lawyers in the last few years”.

To get even, Barker has filed a claim of class-action fraud, defamation and racketeering against Patrick Collins Inc., Malibu Media, Raw Films, K-Beech, and Third Degree Films.

According to Frankel’s piece, this is what the allegations include:

“In effect, the pornography purveyors have developed a new business model using the court system to extort money from individuals who are merely identified by IP address and with no proof whatsoever that they downloaded copyrighted materials from the Internet…By extorting settlements of $1,000-$5,000 the pornography purveyors have developed a model whereby they can unlawfully gain more money than they can by selling access to their pornographic videos.”

http://www.straight.com/blogra/porn-bills-producers-lead-class-action-lawsuit