Jail for flight attendant who blackmailed salesman on Instagram

A female flight attendant was jailed for three months for threatening a man on Instagram, demanding that he pay her Dh365,000 or else she would post naked pictures of his wife with her boyfriend.

The Azerbaijani victim, a 35-year-old salesman, said he received a message from the 29-year-old Latvian woman on December 31 last year on his Instagram account in which she wrote that she had pictures of his wife naked with a man who is the defendant’s own former boyfriend.

“She wrote that I need to open my eyes to see the truth and that she needs only half an hour of my time to tell me all about my wife having an affair. She said she had pictures of my wife while with her lover,” said the husband.

He felt furious, he said, and replied to the defendant’s message asking for information. She told him that she had found picture of the lovers on an iPad that her ex-boyfriend left at her home.

“She demanded $100,000 in return for not posting the pictures online and threatened that if I did pay her, she would also send the pictures to my family back home,” the victim testified, adding that he immediately paid her $10,000 when she forwarded him one of the pictures and it was true that it was his wife.

“I transferred the amount to her bank account, which she provided,” he said.

The defendant then told him that he had to pay $10,000 for each picture.

“I have a very good reputation in my country and those pictures would ruin it and devastate my daughter,” he added.

The man reported the incident to Dubai Police, and officers traced the Instagram account and arrested the defendant. During police questioning, the defendant allegedly admitted creating an Instagram account to blackmail the victim but at Dubai Criminal Court last month, she denied charges of issuing threats and attempting to blackmail the salesman.

A 29-year-old police officer testified that the defendant said she had plotted with her ex-boyfriend over the blackmail.

“She said that they both decided to blackmail the woman’s husband. They ruined the couple’s marriage when they sent the husband a picture of his wife naked in bed with another man,” said the officer.

The defendant was convicted of all charges and sentenced to three months in jail, to be followed by deportation.