Mines Client Sentenced to 20 Weekends for Internet Extortion

Despite Crown Counsel’s  remarks that the case was “an Amanda Todd Situation”, we were able to convince a  North Vancouver Provincial Court Judge that our client should not be sentenced to the nine month period of incarceration sought by the Crown. Emphasising the need for denunciation, but tempering his sentence because he accepted that our client was a truly remorseful youthful man with no prior record, Judge Merrick placed our client on probation and ordered that he serve 20 consecutive weekends in custody.

The case invoved our client pleading guilty and taking full responsibility for his actions. Two years ago, when he and the complainant were 20, he obtained a pornographic video of her. Over a 26 hour period, he twice contacted her by Facebook and threatened to distribute the video to her Facebook friends unless she sent him nude photos of herself. She refused; he carried out his threat, including posting the video to a pornography site. This caused the complainant “severe psychological harm” for which she required treatment over a one year period. Our client, upon arrest, provided a full confession and wrote a letter of apology to the complainant. He underwent two psychological assessments which deemed him a “low risk to reoffend”.

In our view, this case is only similar to the Amanda Todd case in the sense that he used the internet to threaten the complainant. There are some clear distinctions. Our client and the complainant knew each other; they were both 20 when the offence occured. He committed the offence over a 26 hour period and then stopped. He confessed upon his arrest and apologized to the complainant. On the other hand, Aydin Coban, the 35 year old Dutchman who allegedly pushed 13 year old Amanda Todd to suicide after luring her and continuously extorting her over the internet has taken no responsibility. He remains in a Duth prison, vowing to fight “tooth and nail” agaist being extradited to Canada to face charges.

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