Since August last year, more than 200 supermarkets have received terrifying threats that should be taken seriously. Thanks to local detectives, a Slovenian has now been caught in Italy who had extorted huge sums of money from companies in half of Europe.
An initially unknown person sent blackmail letters in English threatening to inject cyanide and rat poison into food and drinks if they did not transfer the necessary sums of money in the form of the internet currency Bitcoin. He also sent a demonstration video to substantiate his project.
Beverage manufacturers from Upper Austria as victims
Companies in Switzerland, France, Germany, Italy and Austria were affected. Specifically, in January of this year, a large and well-known beverage manufacturer in Upper Austria became the target of the initially unknown criminal.
In an email, the blackmailer demanded a ransom of 30,000 euros from the local producer. The company immediately alerted the police. And the suspect made the calculation without the red-white-red investigators: despite the encrypted e-mail address, the investigators of the State Criminal Investigation Department in Upper Austria, together with their colleagues from the Federal Investigation Department, managed to trace the digital trail back to Trieste.
To a Slovenian known to the authorities for fraud. And so the 47-year-old received a “visit” from the Italian police and was arrested.
New cybercrime unit has already proven itself
For the head of the State Criminal Investigation Service in Upper Austria, Gottfried Mitterlehner, the success of the search also speaks for a newly created special unit. “We recently had our own cybercrime unit and it has now proven itself for the first time,” he said in an interview with Krone.
The experts, in collaboration with the police negotiating group, managed to find a trace in the numerous e-mails to and from the blackmailer. “The perpetrator was actually using encryption software, but at one point he made a mistake, which our experts exploited and found the trail,” says Mitterlehner.
Source: Krone
I am Ida Scott, a journalist and content author with a passion for uncovering the truth. I have been writing professionally for Today Times Live since 2020 and specialize in political news. My career began when I was just 17; I had already developed a knack for research and an eye for detail which made me stand out from my peers.
