Owner of the website, Anderson Ofosuhene Anim alias Mario Gee was arrested over charges of money laundering, pornography, and breach of provisions on cybercrime.
The prosecution revealed that Mr. Anim’s website came under scrutiny from the police for publishing pornographic material of Ghanaians on their blindside.
The prosecution added that he took money from victims to take down their videos or pictures from his website but refused to do so.
He reportedly took between GHC100 or GHC500 through mobile money to take down the contents but the contents persisted on the internet.
However, The operator and founder of pornographic site Empressleak will be charged with child pornography, extortion, and obscenity.
This was revealed at a press briefing by the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), Criminal Investigation Department (CID), and the Ministry for Communications.
The background of how Mr. Anderson Ofosuhene Anim was nabbed as narrated at the press conference had it that Empress Leak is a website known for the publication of child pornographic and adult sexual content. The website records about 600,000 monthly users who are located in Ghana, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom.
Addressing the media, Minister of Communications, Ursula Owusu Ekuful said the operator of this notorious site has always been on the wanted list of the Cyber Security team and the search for him was necessitated when a female Senior High School student, filed a report on January 6th, 2020, with the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-GH) of the NCSC. The report by the victim who is below 18 years, was to alert the CERT-GH team of an uploaded sexually explicit video of her to the website.
The Minister further noted that preliminary investigations uncovered information on the website’s registrant information, associated domain names, email addresses, telephone contacts as well as residential address of the administrator, Mr. Anderson Ofosuhene Anim.
She stressed that these criminal acts are perpetrated by malicious individuals who build acquaintance with unsuspecting victims on platforms such as social media, dating, and adult websites through the use of fake identities.
Explaining how these criminals operate, the Minister said, victims, are coaxed to either share nude pictures/video of themselves or perform sexual acts that are secretly recorded. The criminals capitalize on these recordings to extort monies from victims.
The Director-General of the CID of the Ghana Police Service, COP Isaac Ken Yeboah, in his address, mentioned that victims who reach out to the perpetrators of these criminal activities are compelled to pay between GHS 500 to 1,000 via mobile money.
He revealed that the suspect will be charged for obscenity, child pornography, and extortion.
Interestingly, most of the people who patronage this site have expressed sadness at the arrest of the founder of this site and are hoping that he is released as soon as possible so he can continue to serve them with pornographic materials.
