The crime of extortion requires a criminal act element and a criminal intent element. The criminal act element characteristically implies obtaining property of another by using a threat to cause harm to the victim (Nikolić et al., 2017). The threat may be related to the victim’s health (to cause bodily injury), to property (to cause some damage on the victim’s property), to the victim’s reputation (to reveal some personal information). An example is a criminal demanding a victim to pay them twenty thousand dollars, or they will spread the victim’s private photos. However, some acts including threat, may not be considered the crime of extortion if they are not accompanied with the intent to thieve.
Usually, the criminal intent element required for extortion is the purpose of obtaining money or property that one is not legally owning. Such specific intent should exist at the time of the threat to establish extortion. Conscious aim to commit the criminal act and making the threat is sufficient. It implies that the actual stealing of money or property is not required to commit the offense of extortion. Considering the previous example, if a person asks another to loan twenty thousand dollars and after getting refusal threats to spread photos – the criminal intent element required for extortion is lacking.
A possible defense to extortion could be evidence that the money or property belonging to another person and taken with the use of threat are taken fairly, for example, as compensation. Thus, if an employee does not get the money earned and threatens the employer to cause harm in order to receive a salary, technically, it is not considered an offense of extortion. To protect oneself from being a victim of such crimes, “educational programs that address related aspects, such as cyberviolence risks, personal data protection, preservation of digital evidence, appropriate reactions to cyber threats, and incident reporting” may be helpful (Vasiu & Vasiu, 2020, p. 24). Such strategies are highlighted since, nowadays, extortion has become a widespread crime in cyberspace due to the availability of mass digital technologies.