Americans suspected of extortion by removing ‘mugshots’ for a fee

The prosecutor of the American city of Sacramento has accused four Americans of extortion, among other things, for publishing police photos on the Mugshots.com site and removing them for a fee.

The prosecution accuses the four of extortion, money laundering and identity theft. They collected photos, names and indictments of arrested Americans from police sites via scraping, and then published them on their site Mugshots.com. They did this without the consent of those involved and even after the charges were dropped, the data remained online.

Those who contacted the site to request removal were redirected to a second site, Unpublisharrest.com. By paying here, the data was deleted. Over a three-year period, the suspects made more than $2 million through 5,703 Americans who paid to get their data offline.

“This pay-for-removal method is aimed at making money from the humiliation of another,” said Sacramento District Attorney Xavier Becerra. The four suspects do not live in California themselves and must therefore be arrested and extradited in another state. Both websites are still online.