Policy · 21h ago
The FTC filed suit against Dmitry Belkin and 12 affiliated companies, including Digital Forensics Corp. and BlackmailHelpline.com, and won a temporary order halting their business over an alleged sextortion-assistance fraud scheme that brought in at least $60 million. The agency says the operation has run since at least 2020 and targeted people already under pressure from nude-photo extortion threats.
According to the complaint, the firms sold “Phase 1” help they did not actually deliver: they allegedly used the victim’s own account to contact the scammer, then changed account settings to block messages, fabricated chat transcripts, reused saved location data, and denied refunds. In plain terms, the service appears to have sold the appearance of investigation and relief, not the investigation itself.
For practitioners and trust-and-safety teams, the exposure is the recovery path itself: when victims search for help, a paid “blackmail fix” can become a second scam layered on top of the first. The case also shows how much harm can come from false assurance and delayed contact with real law enforcement or platform abuse teams, even when no technical intrusion is involved.
2 sources covering this story
The Record from Recorded Future
FTC: Company netted at least $60 million charging sextortion victims for help it didn’t provide
An Ohio-based company charged individuals thousands of dollars to fight sextortion scams, but the operation itself was fraudulent, according to a Federal Trade Commission complaint.
FTC says ‘sextortion’ protection companies deceived customers about services
A federal lawsuit alleges that Dmitry Belkin and his companies routinely failed to deliver on services to protect customers, generated fake evidence and denied refunds to victims.
Part of the PlainSec briefing for 2026-10-14