Photo: Nigerian man & his Cambodian girlfriend arrested on charges of extortion and blackmail

A Nigerian man and his Cambodian girlfriend were arrested on Thursday, September 8th and charged by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court last Saturday, with extorting $300 from a Cambodian woman.

According to Keo Sitha, a police officer in the technology crimes department in the Interior Ministry, 37-year-old Uchechukwu Vincent and 27-year-old Sarim Kunthea demanded payment from woman in return for not revealing alleged sexual relationship with a another Nigerian man to the woman’s husband.

The pair lived in a house in Sansom Kosal 5 village, Boeung Tumpon commune, in Phnom Penh’s Chamkarmon district. Mr. Sitha added that they had been charged with “threat accompanied by extortion” under article 232 of the Criminal Code.

"They were arrested by our police while they came to get the $300 at a Wing transfer shop in Chom Chao commune,” he said.

According to the 28-year-old woman’s complaint, she dated a Nigerian man in 2014, but the two later separated, and in 2015, she married a Cambodian man. But earlier this month, Mr. Vincent and Ms. Kunthea – friends of the woman’s Nigerian ex-boyfriend – threatened to tell her current husband about the affair, assuming it would somehow offend the woman’s current husband.

In a series of phone calls, they demanded $300 in exchange for hiding the information. The woman called the police and prepared the money transfer to apprehend the pair.

Source: KHMER