A Delaware woman was arrested Friday in Delaware on criminal charges related to her role in an international sextortion scheme that targeted thousands of victims throughout the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, according to authorities.
According to an indictment unsealed Friday, from May 2020 through December 2022, Hadja Kone, 28, of Wilmington, and Siaka Ouattara, 22, of Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, and other co-conspirators allegedly operated an international, financially motivated sextortion and money laundering scheme in which the conspirators engaged in cyberstalking, interstate threats, money laundering, and wire fraud.
Through the scheme, Kone, Ouattara, and others attempted to extort approximately $6 million from thousands of potential victims and successfully extorted approximately $1.7 million using CashApp and ApplePay accounts alone.
As alleged in the indictment, Ouattara and others posed as young, attractive females online.
They initiated communications with thousands of potential victims, who were primarily young men, and included minors from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
Ouattara and others allegedly offered to provide and/or provided victims with sexual photographs, video recordings, and/or “webcam” or “live video chat” sessions of what they falsely portrayed to be an attractive young female when, in fact, they were the ones operating the accounts, officials stated.
Unbeknownst to the victims, during the webcam/live video chats, Ouattara and others surreptitiously recorded the victims as they exposed their genitals and/or engaged in sexual activity.
Ouattara and others sent the victims copies of the victims’ fraudulently obtained sexual images and threatened to distribute the victims’ sexual images to the victim’s friends, family members, significant others, employers, and co-workers and to publish the victims’ sexual images widely online unless the victims transferred funds to designated recipients.
Ouattara, Kone, and others also operated infrastructure to transfer the funds illegally obtained from the victims to Ouattara and others located in Côte d’Ivoire and elsewhere overseas.
On Feb. 24, Ivoirian authorities separately arrested Ouattara in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, on Ivoirian charges stemming from the same scheme.
Kone and Ouattara are each charged with conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and to send interstate threats, conspiracy to engage in money laundering, and wire fraud.
If convicted, Kone and Ouattara each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for each conspiracy and money laundering count and a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for each wire fraud count.
The defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
The FBI is investigating the case with assistance from the government of Cote d’Ivoire.
Trial Attorney Austin Berry of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Senior Trial Attorney Mona Sedky of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Briana Knox for the District of Delaware are prosecuting the case.