The Streeterlaw Fraud Department had a surge of extortion/blackmail cases in 2013. One of these cases involved a victim receiving threats from an anonymous source, whereby private and intimate information was to be “withheld” by an anonymous blackmailer, providing the victim made regular cash payments to an undisclosed location.
The case advanced to the Supreme Court of NSW on 4 June 2013 where Justice Ball found in favour of the victim of the blackmail threats.
The Court made the following orders:
- the Defendant must restrain from communicating to any person in any representation in relation to the plaintiff;
- the Defendant must restrain from communicating in any form with the Plaintiff other than by communicating with the Plaintiff’s solicitors;
- Judgment for the Plaintiff against the Defendant plus interest;
- Judgement for the Plaintiff against the Defendant for exemplary damages;
- The Defendant to pay the Plaintiff’s costs on an indemnity basis.
Streeterlaw Principal Mark Streeter was delighted with the outcome of what was a complex case.
“This was a technical and complicated case; our success is a testimony to our passionate and tenacious pursuit of the target. We are pleased that we were able to achieve an excellent outcome for our client,” Mr Streeter said.
He said he believes the increase in fraud is mostly attributable to the ability of people to remain anonymous online: “Fake IDs can be used on the Internet and it is not always easy to verify an identity that is found online.”
Fraud is increasingly prevalent in society, so it is important to educate the public and to create awareness about fraud – but there is a fine line between educating the public and educating fraudsters, so we have not detailed here how we obtained the evidence to achieve this result.
