Air hostess jailed over blackmail, extortion bid

dubai — An air hostess, accused of threatening a man with circulating his wife’s compromising photos with her ex-lover, has been sentenced to three months in jail.

She earlier denied in court the charges of using the Internet to make threats and demanding $100,000. However, the Court of First Instance has found her guilty and ordered her deportation at the end of her jail time. Her accomplice, the wife’s alleged exlover, is still at large.

Public prosecution records show the 29-year-old Latvian woman blackmailed the complainant that she would send the said photos to his relatives back home if he did not give her the money.

The complainant, a 35-yearold salesman from Azerbaijan, said he got a message from the accused on Instagram on December 31 last year.

“She asked for $100,000 for the photos — $10,000 for every photo. I wired $10,000 to her account at a bank when she sent me the first photo.”

The husband told the prosecutor that the accused threatened to send the photos to people in his home country if he failed to transfer the money.

The police arrested the accused shortly after the complaint was filed. “She admitted she had opened a fake account on Instagram to blackmail the husband. Her accomplice, a runaway, used to know the complainant’s wife. And together, they planned to extort money from the husband and destroy his relationship with his wife,” a police lieutenant said.

“She admitted she told the husband she had inappropriate photos of his wife that proved she was cheating on him with her lover (the runaway suspect). She sought money for those photos.”

Her accomplice gave her the iPad that contained the photos. She was to give it to the husband for $50,000, the officer added.

mary@khaleejtimes.com