Porn Extortion Case: Swedish Man Gets Prison Time For Trying to Porn-Shame Website Visitors Into Paying Up

Dennies Pettersson, a 42-year-old from Stockholm, Sweden, was sentenced Monday to two and a half years for extortion after he sent bills to thousands of viewers who visited his porn site, threatening to publish their names if they didn’t pay him, reports Yahoo News.

Pettersson acquired the rights for streaming videos on a foreign website, newerotica.mobi, and in 2013, he told newspaper Sydsvenskan he legally made the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars in Swedish kronor from subscribers who agreed to prices in its terms and conditions.

And for users who watched for free? Even though they didn’t leave their contact details, Pettersson was able to match them with a list of IP addresses he bought from Sweden's largest Internet service provider. From 2012 to 2013, he sent bills to people he claimed watch porn clips. If they didn’t pay, he would raise the amount, threatening to call the police or publish their names on an online “porn blacklist” that revealed which videos they watched and wouldn’t pay for.

Porn-stortion based on porn-shaming, if you will: Less obnoxious than revenge porn, which is the publication of sexual images of someone without their consent, but still obnoxious -- and illegal.

"The district court has determined that the plaintiffs were subjected to aggravated extortion in the cases where it is proven that they received a bill of this kind," a district court in Malmo, southern Sweden, said in a statement, according to Yahoo.

Two of Pettersson’s accomplices were given suspended terms, and three others got prison sentences from 12 to 18 months.