Why cases of blackmail and sextortion are on the rise

0:03Hi, I'm Julie Banks and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. If you're new here, why not hit follow and leave a review? Coming up, what happens when a 700-year-old process collides with the TikTok generation? So there'll be these really fast-paced videos set to like Charlie XCX's Vroom Vroom or Von Dutch. And it will be all about making these cardinals who are, you know, just like random old men looking really sexy and cool. The London Standards features writer and columnist Maddy Musson is here with Gen Z's reaction to the new Pope.

0:45But first, have you ever wondered what actually takes place when rumours swirl about celebrities or public figures taking out injunctions? while Alexandra McCready is head of reputation and privacy for law firm Vardags and joins us now to reveal exactly what goes on behind closed doors when it comes to keeping her clients free from unwanted attention or even cases of blackmail. So Alex, what's the most likely scenario that prompts a call from a client to your company? Anecdotally for us, because Vardags deals with a lot of family disputes, divorces, breakdowns of relationships, it's often something like that is that has caused or has been the trigger and people then try to I think sometimes get the upper hand through try to exert pressure on their partner whether it's for revenge purposes or to get a better settlement or to get more money etc people sometimes stray into the realms of blackmail not necessarily because they realize that's what they're doing, but it sometimes crosses the line.

1:53And I think the other main scenario is probably what people typically think of as blackmail, which is they meet someone, whether it's out online, it's a short relationship, and that person has compromising material on them, whether it's photographs, videos, etc. And then they make concrete threats to release that information, that private information or that damaging information, unless money's paid to them. They're the two most common scenarios I typically face. And how do you initially respond to a scenario like that? What actually takes place next? It's really important to sort of sit down, understand what's happened, gather the evidence.

2:36And so that can be sometimes combing through thousands of WhatsApp messages, voice notes, images, and understanding how events have played out and understanding and gathering the evidence to see if that is a case genuinely of harassment or blackmail or a threat and breach of privacy. And so once we have all that information, we're then looking at who's behind it. Is this person known to the client or is it someone who is either anonymous or they don't have a lot of information about them? And then we'll look and sit down and talk about what the legal options are. And that sort of can be both from the criminal perspective, you know, are we going to go to the police or are we going to look at civil options like anti-harassment injunctions or an injunction at court?

3:27And then it's really drilling down to what the client's motivations are. What are they concerned about? Sometimes it's a concern for physical safety. Sometimes it's a concern to keep things as private as possible because they're in the public eye or high profile. And so it's really then strategising what's the best option for the client. So would you say cases like these are increasing in frequency? And if so, why do you think that is? Anecdotally, yes. And I think there's some stats around blackmail offences, which reference extortion. And there has been a huge increase in the past decade. And that's particularly since the pandemic.

4:06Why is it increasing? I mean, it's partly, I think, a challenging economic climate. But I think also people are spending more time online, they're more tech savvy, and sort of greater access to information. And I feel like people are definitely more comfortable using things like VPNs to hide their identity, also just behaving in a way online that they wouldn't necessarily behave in, in real life. And I think there's sort of a general trend around that anyway. Does AI ever come into play with some of these scenarios? And are you concerned about its growing impact kind of moving forward? Yeah, I think it's something that all lawyers in every area are talking about and thinking about how it will impact their clients.

4:53And this is definitely one of them because just as everyone and the law is trying to get up to speed with sort of developments in technology, you know, we were trying to get our head around the impact of social media and the spread of information on that we're now thinking about how AI technology can be used in all of these sort of situations so you're looking at things like the increasing number of deep fakes there's new defying technology which can alter photographs and images very easily so I think in terms of the sort of blackmail extortion cases that are being run online, whether it's by criminals or by people who are tech savvy, the use of AI is definitely going to become a key challenge in that.

5:41Occasionally, we hear about injunctions or super injunctions being implemented. What does that actually mean? And why shouldn't some of these stories become public? So an injunction is when you go to court very urgently and ask the court to step in and say someone is threatening, to use an example, to release private, intimate images about me. And they're threatening to release them if I don't pay them X amount. Now, the courts take blackmail in those sort of situations very seriously. And so they will normally step in to grant that injunction, which could, if the person making the threats doesn't comply, that could result in them being in contempt of court and arrested.

6:27And it normally involves some degree of anonymity for the person seeking the injunction so that their name and sort of very intimate details aren't revealed. And I think one of the important things is as a lawyer, you know, I think it's quite right that we don't approach a case with a moral judgment. Our job is to gather the facts and advise the client whether the law is there to protect them. I think one of the first things I say in a meeting with a client is that I'm not there to judge. I'm there to listen and be objective. Whatever the events that led up to it, being blackmailed is an incredibly distressing and disempowering situation to be in.

7:05And it's a very hard situation to navigate, I think. So, Alex, finally, what advice do you give to your clients and indeed would you give to anyone who wants to make sure that they try and avoid falling victim to any kind of blackmail or sextortion? I think in terms of safety tips, it's being very mindful and careful with what information you provide to people online. And that is one of the most obvious and best things you can do to protect yourself. In terms of sort of someone who is facing a potential situation where they feel it could be tipping into the realms of harassment or blackmail, I guess my top tips are, and the things I see most often, are that people delete the evidence because it's either too difficult to look at, it's triggering, they don't want it there on their phone.

7:55So often a lot of the very helpful evidence that might be needed to go to the police or go to court has gone. so I'd say one of my top tips is don't delete the evidence if you can't have it on your phone download it and have it somewhere if behavior from someone else is sort of tipping into the realms of making you feel harassed or threatened have a clear trail where you've asked that person to stop and explain why you're finding it distressing because that's actually can be really helpful evidence if you ever do need to get lawyers or police involved in the future And then my main tip is don't pay money.

8:30One of the most common situations I find is when clients come to me is that they paid some money to the person who's threatening them. And nine times out of 10, they were hoping that payment would stop the behavior. And of course it hasn't, then it becomes more difficult. So I think if someone's making threats and demands for money, take a step back and really think about your options before you make any payments, because often that just spurs on the person.

9:02Let's go to a break. Coming up, how the recent papal election fuelled a new obsession among Gen Z. The London Standard's Maddy Musson is here with the lowdown. We'll see you back here in just a moment.

9:21Welcome back. Well, we now have a new Pope after Cardinal Robert Provost became Pope Leo XIV. Along with the thousands of people in St Peter's Square and millions around the world eagerly awaiting the rise of white smoke from the Sistine Chapel chimney, the whole election process also captured the imagination of the younger generation. The London Standards features writer and columnist Maddy Musson has been finding out more and joins us now. Maddy, we've had this glorious kind of clash of the ages with a 700-year-old process taking place, sort of slap bang in the day and age of TikTok culture.

9:59How have younger generations been engaging with what's been unfolding in Rome? Oh, they've been loving it. They've been absolutely loving it. I think that's something Something distinctly appealing to Gen Z's about mocking an old and kind of fusty process, like something that they actually maybe don't care about, joking that you care so much about it, it's like a whole thing. But they do it with elections and everything, and they've been doing it with the papacy selection process in a way that is just so unserious. Basically, it will be like making fan cams of cardinals. So there'll be like these really fast paced videos set to like charlie xcx's vroom vroom or von dutch and it will be all about making these cardinals who are you know just like random old men looking really sexy and cool and then there's also been fan art there's been memes there is a dedicated x page called pope crave which is a play on pop crave which is a pop culture account that gives people pop culture updates so it's been kind of live tweeting everything that happens with the papacy selection process whether there was smoke or not potential front runners, everything like that.

11:09Everybody's been very invested. So it certainly captured the imagination, although maybe not in the way the Catholic Church would have liked. I spoke to the admins of Pope Crave and they said that they think that Pope Francis would actually approve because he was all about bringing the Catholic Church to the masses, making it more accessible and, you know, moving it forward, moving the needle forward and stuff. And they were like, no, I think he'd love our means. So you never know. I don't know how some Catholics would feel about it. I personally think I kind of follow their view, which is that one of them told me when I was speaking to them, they were like, Catholicism is a fandom, so move on.

11:43You know? So yeah. Absolutely. Well, and of course, last year we saw the release of the film Conclave. Do you think that's also partly responsible for sort of sparking this new interest in the process? Hugely. I think Conclave was a really big deal, but it also kind of flew under the radar in some ways and yet even still there is this weird cult following of it amongst like these young women who have just become like extremely attached to it it sometimes happens with like very middle of the road things or even in kind of like oscar campaigning films will gain this kind of like strange fandom traction and people just like cling on to them like i remember when i was young it happened with skyfall the james bond film when i was kind of like in my teens and that was like a very mainstream film doesn't feel like the type of thing that would have like an obsessive fandom but it did have and it happened with you know like Challengers last year and basically Conclave is the last kind of in quotes normie film to get this very abnormal obsessive treatment and I think people just became really obsessed with it you know they really love kind of like calling the cardinals like their babies and their daddies and all these things and you know they love kind of like making this lore about them there's loads of fan fiction out there about the cardinals in Conclave it's very strange but yeah that that's definitely spurred it on.

12:57And so what has been the online reception to the new Pope so far? Have any sort of papal hashtags been trending? It's funny, it's been quite mixed because on the one side, I think people are finding it really, really hilarious that he's from Chicago. So there's been a lot of memes about, you know, him changing the body of Christ from bread to deep dish pizza. And there's been a lot of stuff about like him being in the bear and him having, you know, like these Chicago experiences that no other Pope will reasonably have. Like, I think that's very funny to people. But then also, more seriously, Gen Z are obviously very social justice oriented.

13:33So there are some previous comments that he made maybe back in 2012 about LGBTQ rights. And I think there's maybe a history of his dealing with sexual assault allegations within his former church that people maybe aren't so happy with. Obviously, these are allegations and his opinions may have changed since. but I think that maybe people are slightly disappointed that he's not like this uber progressive super Pope Francis-y Pope but then you know we don't know what he's like now we don't know what he's going to be like so I think that all hangs in the balance. And how about Pope Leo's own social media presence as you mentioned there he'd obviously voiced a few opinions on X when he was a cardinal.

14:16Pope Francis of course had his own Instagram account do you think we can expect Pope Leo to follow suit with that? I imagine not, purely because once you put that big Pope hat on, everything changes, right? But I think that it is funny that some things he's tweeted are kind of coming back on him, almost like when Love Islanders get put into the villa and everyone drags up all their old stuff. It's funny that it's now happening to a Pope. It's crazy that that's the world that we live in. But something really funny that I did notice is when I spoke to one of the Pope Crave admins about what they ideally want from their next Pope, one of them said, I really want him to excommunicate J.D.

14:49Barnes. And if we look back at the current Pope's old Twitter or ex profile, he's really against J.D. Barnes. So it's really nice that, you know, like some of these things are coming out. And yes, it's a weird part of having a Pope in 2025.

15:08And that's The Standard. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. And of course, if you'd like to get in touch, do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk. This podcast will be back on Monday at 4pm. Until then, have a great weekend and thanks for listening.