Catfish horror | 

Irish blogger blackmailed by ‘Nigerian crypto scammer’ with intimate photos

“Look this is happening, you all might see my todger at some point over the next few weeks.”

Today at 11:39

An award-winning Irish mental health blogger has described how a catfish scammer managed to deceive him into sending intimate photos online before demanding €2,000 worth of Bitcoin.

Successful author, Daragh Fleming, spoke to Cork’s 96FM about the horrific ordeal he faced after opening up about the incident on social media on Monday.

“It was easily one of the most stressful days of my entire life. They said that I had 10 seconds to agree to send money,” he said.

Daragh revealed the messages he received from the criminal which said things like ‘Your video is uploading,” ‘I need the money’ and ‘make the deal.’

The Cork man’s horror unfolded after he met a woman on a dating app, who called herself Tracy, and said she was from his home county.

“This wasn’t a generic email scam, it was much more targeted than that. It was far more invasive.

“For a couple of weeks, I was chatting to what I thought was a local woman on a dating app. We were chatting and that was fine and then after a couple of weeks she suggested that we move to SnapChat, which isn’t unusual – it wouldn’t be my first port of call, but it’s not unusual.

‘Tracy’ then began to “kind of sexualise the conversation a bit more. Pictures were exchanged,” Daragh described.

Events took a sinister turn when ‘Tracy’ began demanding crypto currency or else ‘she’ would send his intimate images to his friends and family.

“They sent screenshots of the few pictures I’d sent, plus pictures of my social media, photos of my family’s profiles. They said that I had 10 seconds to agree to send money, it was €2,000 they wanted via Bitcoin.

“Then my SnapChat started ringing and it was the profile of the girl and it was actually a man.”

The individual claimed to be based in Nigeria and that Daragh needed to act quick to prevent the image leak.

“He started saying I had to download an app to send the money. At that point, I hung up, I blocked him.

“He tried to message me on a burner account on Instagram, I blocked that one. About an hour later, he messaged again and tried to ring on Instagram – said he’d drop the price to €500, said he didn’t want to ruin my life and that I should be responsible and pay, so I blocked that account.

“The initial panic was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. It was terrifying but I thought the best thing to do was to take it into my own hands. I instinctively kind of knew, paying him would be the worst call of action.

“That’s when I put out the tweet saying ‘Look this is happening, I’m being blackmailed, they have pictures of me, those pictures might come out.”

“Just to protect my own mental health, because I think what would happen in this situation to someone who’s more vulnerable is that they wouldn’t be able to talk about it, they’d keep it themselves and have to deal with it on their own.

“So I talked to my parents, talked to my brother, talked to a few friends – just told them what was going on, how I was feeling.

“Yesterday was incredibly challenging. The threat of these pictures being sent to my family, but nothing has happened yet, doesn’t mean nothing will happen, it could still happen,” Mr Fleming said.

Daragh gave all the details of the incident to the gardaí via a hotline.

“Unfortunately I don’t think anything can be done because the perpetrator disclosed that he’s in Nigeria, so I don’t think we can do anything.

“But I think it’s still very important to report it. It will make the stats more accurate which means the gardaí might get more funding to actually do something about these types of cases.”

Daragh described how difficult the situation has been but that he has been able to put it in perspective.

“It’s been really tough on the mental health. There is an element of shaming that goes on

“Obviously it’s extremely embarrassing. But if I don’t talk about it on the bad days I’m not doing my job.

“I don’t have control of the pictures anymore, the only power I have is to get ahead of it.

“I was like ‘Look this is happening, you all might see my todger at some point over the next few weeks’ – the worst thing you can do in those situations is give into them.

“Once you give them the money they’re not going to stop asking for money. There’s not much I can do, those pictures are out there. it has been a massive learning moment for me, those pictures, it was incredibly stupid.

“My biggest concern at the moment is that a few people close to me might see my mickey, and if that’s my biggest concern, then my life is actually not too bad,” Daragh added.