Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

The pub­lic is be­ing urged to re­main vig­i­lant as law en­force­ment of­fi­cials warn that ex­tor­tion is evolv­ing and tak­ing on mul­ti­ple forms, with crim­i­nals in­creas­ing­ly us­ing un­con­ven­tion­al meth­ods to iden­ti­fy and ex­ploit vic­tims.

The warn­ing was is­sued dur­ing the open-floor ses­sion of a fo­rum ti­tled Con­ver­sa­tions with the Com­mis­sion­er, fea­tur­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of Com­merce build­ing in West­moor­ings yes­ter­day.

Gue­var­ro said he had been in­formed of an emerg­ing ex­tor­tion tac­tic in which crim­i­nals use the pop­u­lar gay dat­ing app Grindr to tar­get in­di­vid­u­als they be­lieve to have fi­nan­cial means, in­clud­ing mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

He said that dur­ing arranged sex­u­al en­coun­ters, vic­tims were al­leged­ly record­ed with­out their knowl­edge, with the ma­te­r­i­al lat­er used to black­mail them in­to pay­ing large sums of mon­ey.

“I didn’t know it was that pop­u­lar in Trinidad… they were seek­ing to meet par­tic­u­lar per­sons from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty who they think have some fi­nan­cial means,” he said.

“I can tell you per­son­al­ly… I have known per­sons from every stra­ta of so­ci­ety who have fall­en vic­tim to this—politi­cians, mem­bers of the Ju­di­cia­ry, busi­ness­men. They have all suf­fered.

“You don’t hear it be­ing bandied about all over be­cause we speak about con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, be­cause we want to pro­tect the vic­tim.”

Al­so speak­ing at the ses­sion, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Richard Smith, head of the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion, echoed the warn­ing and ad­vised the pub­lic to ex­er­cise cau­tion.

He said black­mail­ers of­ten threat­en to cir­cu­late in­ti­mate pho­tos or videos to vic­tims’ work­places and homes if pay­ment is not made.

Smith urged vic­tims to re­port such in­ci­dents im­me­di­ate­ly, as­sur­ing that the po­lice take steps to pro­tect their pri­va­cy, in­clud­ing main­tain­ing the con­fi­den­tial lo­ca­tion of the An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Unit for se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons.

He al­so high­light­ed an­oth­er emerg­ing form of ex­tor­tion in­volv­ing preda­to­ry lend­ing prac­tices, where mon­ey is loaned to in­di­vid­u­als and ex­ces­sive, es­ca­lat­ing in­ter­est is lat­er im­posed with­out their knowl­edge or con­sent.

He cit­ed a case in south Trinidad in which a cou­ple was ar­rest­ed and joint­ly charged with 134 counts of de­mand­ing mon­ey by men­ace.

“They loaned a man ap­prox­i­mate­ly $15,000. When he was fin­ished pay­ing, he paid al­most $100,000 be­cause of the num­ber of times they went to him and kept say­ing he owed them in­ter­est,” Smith said.

“When you start to pay, they don’t know when to stop un­til the po­lice get in­volved.”

Smith al­so pro­vid­ed up­dat­ed fig­ures show­ing a de­cline in ex­tor­tion re­ports in sev­er­al polic­ing di­vi­sions so far this year. Na­tion­al­ly, re­ports fell to two com­pared to 11 last year. The North East­ern Di­vi­sion record­ed ze­ro cas­es, down from five; the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion in­creased slight­ly from nine to ten; Port-of-Spain fell to ze­ro from one; the South West­ern Di­vi­sion record­ed one case; the South­ern Di­vi­sion de­clined from six to three; and To­ba­go record­ed no cas­es.