The company that promised to find your blackmailer sent fake coordinates

Picture someone at two in the morning being blackmailed over an intimate photo, searching for help, and finding an advert that promises to track down whoever is doing it. According to a complaint the Federal Trade Commission filed on 13 October, that advert led to a company that took at least 60 million dollars and, in many cases, did essentially nothing.

The defendants are Digital Forensics Corporation, its owner Dmitry Belkin and eleven related companies, operating sites including BlackmailHelpline.com. The product was a "Phase 1" package costing between 1,499 and 20,000 dollars, sold on the promise of identifying the blackmailer, talking to them, producing an investigative report and taking the case to police. The FTC alleges the reports were filled with fabricated chat transcripts and recycled location coordinates pointing at Nigeria or the Philippines, that police were not contacted, and that the company's own refund policy was routinely ignored. Sales staff worked from scripts leaning on phrases like "life altering" before pushing a more expensive Phase 2 monitoring service.

Two details say the most. The complaint describes negative reviews being buried under fake positive ones, including testimonials from Uber drivers who were paid to write them, and complaints being funnelled to a counterfeit Better Business Bureau site. And the company allegedly told victims not to block the blackmailer, which is the opposite of what the FBI advises.

A federal court in the Northern District of Ohio has temporarily halted the operation while the case proceeds, and none of this is proven yet. The genuinely useful steps cost nothing: stop replying, do not pay, block the account, screenshot everything, and report it to the police or the FBI. Tendvane's privacy and accounts check covers the quieter half of this, which is how much of your account and sign-in setup is exposed in the first place.