Malaysian DJ and Playboy model Leng Yein played an integral role in exposing a massive internet porn scam after she began receiving messages from female fans, many of them underage girls, claiming their nude photos were stolen and published online.
The women and girls who sought Yein’s help, as the Daily Beast reported exclusively, are victims of a “massive, highly organized online porn ring,” in which criminals posing as modeling agents, friends and exes promised money or gifts in exchange for pornographic content that perpetrators then sold, published online and/or used to blackmail victims into sending more explicit photos and videos.
Yein, who has often used her platform to warn followers of online scams, took to YouTube to condemn what she called “the worst extortion case of naked photos in Malaysian history,” in a video posted back in February.
Since then, Australian reputation management and takedown company Internet Removals has worked with Yein to remove more than 100,000 photos stolen from the victims and published without their consent, including pornographic content reportedly featuring girls as young as 8 and 11.
While Internet Removals usually charges for its takedown services, Jasmine Loh, a reputation analyst at Internet Removals Asia, told the Daily Beast that in this case, “the scale of harm caused by incidents was enough to warrant immediate action without cost to any of the victims.”
The company also revealed multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts perpetrators used to sell, distribute and publish the content, many of which were suspended after the Daily Beast alerted the social media platforms to the scam.
Loh implored any potential perpetrators of “image-based abuse,” whether people sharing someone else’s private photos with friends or organizations exploiting pornographic content for profit, to reconsider their actions, telling the Daily Beast that such harassment can have dire consequences including self-harm and suicide. “There is no gain that can justify these actions,” she said.
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