Man suspected of sex video extortion in Fremont

A 33-year-old Fremont man was arrested on suspicion of videotaping a couple having sex and then trying to extort them for money, police said Monday.

Maninder Adama was arrested last week by Fremont police after they were alerted of the alleged video scheme from his former roommates.

The couple in their 20s had moved in March into a two-bedroom apartment on the 3500 block of Pennsylvania Avenue that was shared with other people, including Adama.

By mid-June, when the couple had already moved out, they began receiving messages from an unknown email, with the sender claiming to have video of the couple having sex, according to police. The sender included screenshots of the video as proof, and the couple believed it must have been when they were living on Pennsylvania Avenue.

In July, the mysterious email sender began threatening the victims, stating that the video would be posted on Facebook and tag them both if they did not pay $2,000. The sender then raised the price to $5,000 and threatened that if the amount wasn’t paid, the video would be posted on multiple websites and sent to their family members.

The couple reported the incident to police, and detectives began tracking down the suspect through metadata embedded in photos sent by the extortionist.

After Adama was identified as a suspect, police served a search warrant Thursday on the Pennsylvania Avenue apartment, where they found several laptops and other devices used for audio and video recording.

Forensics investigators searched one of the laptops and found the video of the couple on it, police said.

They were also able to link Adamas’s cell phone to the email account being used to send demands to the victims, police said.

Adama was arrested on suspicion of felony extortion, and misdemeanor counts related to invasion of privacy.

Detectives continue to investigate if there were any additional victims. Anyone with information is asked to contact police detectives at 510-7906954.