The Administrator of Empressleak Ghana, a pornographic website, has been granted a bail of GH¢300,000 by an Accra Circuit Court.
Anderson Ofosuhene Anim, aka Mario G, was arrested for leaking the sex tapes of many victims and demanding huge sums of monies from them in order to take the videos down.
The accused is facing four charges, including publication of obscene material, child pornography, extortion and money laundering.
His plea is yet to be taken as the arresting bodies have forwarded the case docket to the Attorney General’s (AG’s) Department for advice on the way forward.
Appearing before the court yesterday, the prosecutor, Inspector Princess Tetteh Boafo, told the court that the plea of the accused should be reserved while they wait for the AG’s advice.
Counsel for the accused subsequently prayed the court to grant him bail as they await the advice from the AG and the prosecution did not oppose the grant of bail.
The court, presided over by Susana Eduful, granted the accused bail in the sum of GH¢300,000 with two sureties.
The sureties are to provide documents of properties registered in the name of one or both of them.
The court gave the prosecution one month by which time the advice of the AG would have been ready.
The case was adjourned to October 12, 2020.
Arrest
Mario G has been accused of using the porn website to publish nude pictures and videos of people and extorting money from them.
He was arrested on July 30, 2020 in a joint operation by the Cyber Crime Unit of the Criminal Investigation Department and the Ministry of Communications.
He is said to have operated the website for the past six years from his home at Osino in the Eastern Region.
The suspect was arrested whilst he was in the act of uploading nude pictures and videos of some victims onto the website.
His arrest followed a six-month surveillance by the security agencies to track his activities.
Modus Operandi
Victims are made to pay between GH¢500 and GH¢2000 through a mobile money account before their pictures are taken down from the website.
Despite the huge sums of monies the victims are made to pay, the victims continue to receive threatening calls from others believed to be accomplices of the accused who have downloaded the videos and in turn make demands for monies in order to get rid of the videos.
The accomplices allegedly build acquaintances with the victims through social media platforms including dating sites using fake identities.
They then coerce the victims to share nude pictures or videos of their sexual acts which are secretly copied.
The police are making efforts to arrest the accomplices of Mario G.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak
