Egyptian police have arrested three men for demanding money from a soft drinks company to remove from the Internet a picture of a cockroach inside one of their bottles, the MENA news agency said Tuesday, February 27.
A computer engineer, his brother and a lawyer were all arrested for attempting to blackmail the unidentified company out of 50,000 Egyptian pounds ($13,000), the state-run agency reported.
They had already posted a picture of the cockroach-infested bottle on the internet, after the firm refused to give in to extortion, and were threatening to post a picture of another contaminated bottle, MENA said.
Police said their investigations revealed that 3,700 people had visited the internet site before they conducted a sting operation, after which the accused confessed to trying to blackmail the company, the agency said. — (AFP, Cairo)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
