An Orange County man has been charged by federal authorities with allegedly using malicious software to download sexually explicit photos of scores of women and girls and using those images to extort additional pornographic materials from them, officials said Tuesday.
Luis Mijangos allegedly victimized at least 44 girls and 186 women in the so-called sextortion case, according to a 23-page criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Federal authorities expect the number of victims to grow.
Mijangos, a paraplegic wounded in a gang shooting, was being held on $10,000 bail Tuesday after making his first appearance in federal court.
The complaint was filed after a two-year investigation by the FBI's cyber squad and alleges Mijangos used software to hack into computers and extract data he would later use to threaten his victims.
The software allowed him access to all files, pictures and videos on an infected computer. It also allowed him to access any web camera and microphone attached to an infected computer remotely to watch and listen to unknowing victims, according to the criminal complaint.
Mijangos also was allegedly found with screen grabs of financial information from his victims, including credit cards, websites and accounts with TurboTax, T-Mobile, Netflix, Paypal, HSBC and Chase Bank.
In one case, investigators claim Mijangos sent an e-mail to a victim, identified as K.S. from Washington state, in which he attached a pornographic picture of the victim and threatened to expose the images to her family if she did not send him an explicit video of herself or if she told anyone, the complaint alleges.
"I will publish the images and let your family know about your dark side...so you better do that video, send it to me via e-mail and you will never hear from me ever," Mijangos said in the e-mail, according to the criminal complaint.
"If I don't hear from you then your family will hear from me," he wrote in another e-mail, the complaint stated.
In another case, a 20-year-old woman said she placed a sticker over her web cam earlier this month when she believed it was being accessed without her permission.
Shit like this just makes me want to choke people.
