Cops probe online T&T porn ring; child sex videos, nudes being sold in Telegram groups
Trinidadian men and women are selling and trading child rape videos on the social media app Telegram for as much as $200.
At least one person involved in the porn ring says 207 videos are available for that price. He’s on a Telegram group called Trini’s School leaks/twerks Videos, which had 945 members as of yesterday.
That chat is a market for buying and selling child pornographic content.
Pornographic content featuring local females—which range from young girls to older women—are also available for purchase on Telegram.
In addition, some men are even selling intimate pictures their ex-partners would have sent to the porn groups for money. If interested persons can’t pay for content, some men are trading nude photos of women for other nude images.
“I spending my money for this? Alyuh rel f*@&%$ stink in here,” one person posted in one group chat, which has 8,525 members.
Meanwhile, in other Telegram groups, some people are taking women’s photos from their social media pages, altering it via Artificial Intelligence (AI) software so that they appear nude, and selling them. Up for sale in the various group chats are digitally altered photos that women initially posted with themselves fully clothed in their social media which are now nude images.
Curious to find out if nudes exist of a person?People are taking pictures of girls off their social media pages and posting them on the chats seeking nude images of them.
Guardian Media, with support from IT consultant Shivam Teelucksingh, has identified 22 groups on Telegram selling and trading local pornographic content.
You can view the name chats if you have the app but to join the chats you need an invite.
There are thousands of people—men and women—on these chats and at any given time there are hundreds of people online in the chat.
The chats are: Best of Trini/Vincy/Bajan/Guyanese, Vazou Teens, Trini Pretty Pipers nationwide, A-Leaks, T&T Sex Group (Escorts and more), Sinful Leaks TT, Trinidad Freaks all day, Nothing but steam, Pretty little piper’s, Wet It Up, Only local leaks, Trini hub, Trini school leaks, Trini barely legal leaks, Trinidad Pretty little pipers, The Continental regime, T&T Unseen Content 2023, Alya rel f*****ing stink in here, Trinidad no limit, leaks only, Trini nude only 2024 and Local 2024.
Telegram is encrypted and allows users to be anonymous.
How women are finding outWomen, who found out their private material was being shared, joined the groups to see what was sold and were unsuccessful in trying to reason with the chat members to get their content removed from the sites.
One of the victims said she was scared to talk, as she was now getting over a “revenge porn” experience and it’s now happening all over again.
She said pictures and videos she sent to her ex were leaked and when confronted, he denied doing this.
She said there was no one to report it to because the groups don’t have names.
She said when she tried to take matters into her own hands and go into the groups, she was bombarded and threatened with rape and death.
“It really disturbs me to go on and I hope some other girls can come forward who were humiliated as well. It put so much mental strain on me, it really made me hurt and not able to trust anyone,” she said.
Another woman told Guardian Media that her family was unaware of the content being circulated and it was a stressful experience.
“My past relationship ended badly and even though I parted ways with the person, months later I came across content I never thought I would have. The relationship ended in January 2023, but closer to September 2023, I received messages from a friend of a friend on Facebook, asking about another profile which used my pictures, under a different name. He asked if it was me and then after explaining it’s not, the person sent me the content of pictures and videos of me which were taken by my ex-boyfriend.
“When I tried seeking help from a police officer I knew, he asked for the videos personally, claiming that he would try to get some insight using some way to track who the videos was possibly sent around by. Nothing came from it so I just pushed it aside and moved on with my life.
“Fast forward to January 2024, two other friends WhatsApp messaged me to tell me that there is content circulating on a Telegram group which shares content of women. The person which would have sent the content of me into the Telegram chats blocked their number and had initials as their name, so it was a dead end to get any information about who sent the content into the chat.”
She added, “It’s a terrifying thing to think about if this goes further and further and the leverage people can have on you, tarnishing your reputation etc. A lot of young women give in to the norm of trying to please their significant other only to then realise later on, that person’s intentions weren’t true and they disrespect you in so many ways which now will affect you in numerous ways, especially maybe in the future.”
More “sick” contentIT consultant Teelucksingh told Guardian Media that there is a local photographer who has a group, in which he shares pictures of women he would have photographed.
“I have a few friends who were posted in these groups and that’s why I started investigating. When they spoke out about these groups, they have gotten calls and threats to scare them, so much so they declined to speak out on it or even do to the authorities,” Teelucksingh said.
“There are people with Only Fans where these persons subscribe and take all the photos and pics and leak them into a very private group which eventually gets out to the public ones. There’s a guy from Guyana with a group; he literally dates women and makes videos and leaks them all over or sells them as well. It’s really disgusting and the moral of this is overlooked as ‘oh well, she send him the pics’ or ‘oh, she was always a bad thing’. This isn’t an excuse for this.”
He added, “There are more premium groups that have even more “sick” content, which has a lot of wealthy people who pay. There are groups that target children as well but they are even more private and dissolve and come back as different names.”
Teelucksingh is trying to create awareness so that women can be aware of what they post on social media and how their images can be manipulated.
Furthermore, there are implications for being blackmailed or just being publicly humiliated.
“Telegram allows you to be anonymous but there are a few ways to find these folks, as a lot of them are starting to use crypto wallets to do transactions for pics, videos, escorts, drugs and more. Some are using local bank accounts but they want to video call you and want your ID to ensure they know who you are. Some buy used SIM cards from different places and use that to gain top-up credit as payment for their services etc which they then sell to people,” he said.
“These groups only scratch the surface of an ever-growing underbelly within T&T and the Caribbean. Resources need to be given to cybercrime, and National Security to give them the means needed to take down this type of entity and protect not only our women but children as well,” he said.
Cops ask victims to come forwardContacted on the issue yesterday, Joanne Archie, Manager, Corporate Communications in the TTPS, said they would immediately engage the Cyber Crime and Social Media Unit and the Child Protection Unit to start a probe into the matter.
“We would be engaging those two units to launch an immediate investigation because those are issues that the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service would not condone.”
Admitting that the unit may have been unaware of the activity until being alerted yesterday by Guardian Median, Archie added, “Of course this would be a concern for us, since those are issues that we address every day in the public domain and we advise persons who have information on these issues to come forward and both the Cyber Crime and Child Protection Unit would collaborate on any investigations coming out of this information.”
Also contacted yesterday, head of the TTPS Special Victims Department, Claire-Guy Alleyne, also said they had not received any reports prior.
“My officers are unaware of this activity but persons who have information, they ought to come forward and give us the information so we could commence an investigation,” she said.
https://www.guardian.co.tt/news/cops-pr ... ba92e1d4e8
