Toronto sisters apologize to Nigerian billionaire after being accused of extortion
Posted December 29, 2016 3:03 pm.
Last Updated December 29, 2016 3:07 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Two Toronto sisters at the heart of an international sex scandal are denying allegations of extortion and apologizing to one of Nigeria’s richest men.
In a video posted on YouTube, Jyoti and Kiran Matharoo apologized to billionaire Femi Otedola and his family.
The two sisters, who have Kardashian-like Instagram profiles, stand accused of running a website with aims of extorting money out of wealthy Nigerian men.
According to reports out of Lagos, Nigeria, they have been charged with cyberbullying and extortion.
A statement, published on the Politics Nigeria website, says they created a website, Twitter and Instagram accounts and are responsible for “humiliation and cyberbullying of some 274 persons, mostly based in various regions of Africa.”
“They approached certain people who they knew were wealthy,” Dumebi Ifeanyi, publisher of Politics Nigeria, tells CityNews.
“They told them that, this is what they have on them, these are the image they have. If they don’t want it to go out in public, if they don’t want a story to go out in public, they should pay a certain amount.”
In the YouTube video, the women claim they received no money from the website and that they had no intention of trying to extort people.
“The intention was not to hurt anyone or to be malicious. The intention was not to extort anyone,” the women explain as they read a prepared statement off a cellphone in the video. “We haven’t received any money from this website.”
They said they will have no affiliation with the website.
“We promise not to say anything to the contrary to what we are saying now,” they continue, adding that the statement was not made under duress.
There has been no word on who shot the video or where the video was shot. Global Affairs Canada told CityNews on Monday they were providing consular services to the sisters, who they confirmed, were being detained in Lagos.
Ifeanyi says the sisters were allegedly caught with laptops and iPads that contained information about different people, including videotapes of men having sex with them.
Politics Nigeria has photos of what are purported to be the sister’s court appearance on December 23.
The sisters, believed to be Canadian citizens with family in Toronto, are due back in court at the end of January.
