Office of Public Affairs | Delaware Woman Arrested for International Sextortion and Money Laundering Scheme | United States Department of Justice

[Gunnar Larson]

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/delaware-woman-arrested-international-sextortion-and-money-laundering-scheme


A Delaware woman was arrested today 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 an indictment unsealed today, 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, Outtara, and
others attempted to extort approximately $6 million from thousands of
potential victims and successfully extorted approximately $1.7 million from
those victims, using CashApp and ApplePay accounts alone.

As alleged in the indictment, Ouattara and others posed as young,
attractive females online and 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 “web cam” 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. Unbeknownst to the
victims, during the web cam/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 victims’ 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,
money laundering, and wire fraud. If convicted, Kone and Ouattara each face
a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for each conspiracy count and money
laundering count, and a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for each wire
fraud count.

Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, head of
the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney David C. Weiss
for the District of Delaware; and Assistant Director Michael Nordwall of
the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division made the announcement.

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.
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