Pakistan Crime: Peshawar man arrested on charges of 'sextortion' of US minor

He was charged with hacking the Snapchat accounts of two other US women as well.

On Wednesday night, the FIA’s Cyber Crime Wing arrested Anas Farooq in Phase VI area of Hayatabad neighbourhood of the provincial capital on the charges of child pornography and criminal intimidation, reports Dawn News.

His father was also taken into custody, but the agency freed him on the production of a bail bond, the newspaper reported.

Deputy director of the FIA Cyber Crime Wing Tahir Khan told a news conference here as quoted by Dawn News that a local court had granted the physical remand of the accused to the agency for two days to probe the hacking and blackmailing charges.

He said that the accused had revealed during the investigation that he had also hacked the Snapchat accounts of two other US-based women.

Tahir said the FIA had recovered pornographic material from the mobile phone of the accused and that the mobile phone had been dispatched for forensic analysis.

He said that the FBI had shared the details of the accused forcing a Virginia-based minor girl into sextortion.

“Though the agency has investigated many cases of child pornography, this is the first trans-national cyber crime linked to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Earlier, we had worked with the FBI on a case in Karachi,” he said.