Daily Mail
December 23, 2014
Chilling ‘sextortion’ emails which urged a teenager to ‘commit suicide now’ after falling victim to online blackmailers have emerged for the first time since he threw himself off a bridge.
Daniel Perry, 17, from Fife, took his own life in July last year after a Filipino cybersex gang threatened to send compromising images of him to his family and friends unless he paid them.
He was encouraged into a sexual encounter via webcam before the sick criminals threatened to make the video public.
His death prompted a large-scale police inquiry and at least 58 Filipino suspects were arrested in May this year after investigators traced online activity.
At least three of those, Archie Tolin, 20, Jomar Palacio, 23, and Vincent Bravo, 22, are believed to have been directly involved in blackmailing Mr Perry.
A BBC investigation has claimed that the Dunfermline teenager received a message from his blackmailers saying: ‘I will make you suffer.’
The 17-year-old begged them not to release the video footage but detectives claim the suspects replied: ‘Commit suicide now.’
Later, they sent a chilling message asking: ‘Are you dead yet?’
A BBC team traced two of the men suspected of being directly involved in Mr Perry’s death.
Jomar Palacio, who lives in a run-down area of Manila, said: ‘I do not know him, I did not get any money, I did not do anything wrong to him, that’s all.’
Another suspect, Vincent Bravo, now works as a waiter in a strip club and lives in a city south of Manila.
‘I didn’t do it, I don’t know anything about it. They have no hard evidence against us,’ he told the BBC.
‘I send my condolences to [the Perry family], but I wasn’t the one who did it. I feel sorry because he left behind a family which loves him.’
All three men will go on trial in Manila but Scots authorities want to extradite them to face trial here.