If someone uses intimate images or threats of exposure to demand money, preserve everything and report it

Free. Save the account details, conversation, payment code, and other evidence, and take your phone to the police station. Resist paying just to make the immediate pressure stop.

Criminal Law Article 274 punishes extortion of a relatively large amount, or repeated extortion, with up to three years’ imprisonment, criminal detention, or public surveillance, and a fine or a fine alone. Criminal detention is short-term custody; public surveillance restricts liberty without incarceration. A huge amount or other serious circumstances brings three to ten years and a fine; an especially huge amount or especially serious circumstances brings at least ten years and a fine. Judicial Interpretation 2013 No. 10, effective 27 April 2013, allows provinces to set the three amount thresholds within RMB 2,000–5,000, RMB 30,000–100,000, and RMB 300,000–500,000 respectively. Three or more acts within two years count as repeated extortion. Civil Code Articles 1032 and 1033 protect privacy and personal peace against intrusion, disclosure, and harassment by telephone, messages, and other means. Disseminating intimate material can therefore create additional liability; it is not automatically a separate crime in every case. Fujian police guidance on a similar scam advises preserving evidence, calling 110 promptly, and stopping further transfers.

Use your province’s thresholds within the national ranges; repeated extortion can qualify even when each demand is small. Do not erase messages or images, close the account, or simply block the person before preserving evidence. Those records may also support your account if you are investigated; see legal representation and records. Do not negotiate an installment plan with the extortionist. The source describes many intimate-video scams as overseas operations that record the screen and use malware to obtain contacts; threats to send material to relatives remain something police can investigate. A victim making a genuine compensation claim is not automatically extorting because the amount is high; see lawful compensation claims. The original could not verify Civil Code Article 1195 on notifying platforms to remove infringing material because the accessible official texts were truncated before it; that specific check remains outstanding.

National People’s Congress (consolidated 2020 text). Criminal Law, Article 274, reposted by Beijing’s traffic-management bureau. https://jtgl.beijing.gov.cn/jgj/jgxx/flfg/fl/11033925/index.html; Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate (2013). Interpretation on extortion cases, Judicial Interpretation 2013 No. 10. https://www.court.gov.cn/zixun/xiangqing/5310.html; National People’s Congress (2020). Civil Code, Articles 1032 and 1033. https://www.spp.gov.cn/spp/fl/202006/t20200602_463888.shtml; Fujian Public Security Department (2024). A sexual-lure message led to RMB 230,000 in debt. http://gat.fujian.gov.cn/ztzl/fjjffpzxrx/spjq/202403/t20240307_6410612.htm.