Brazil - Brasil - BRAZZIL - A Scandal With Racy Pictures in Ribeirao Preto, Sao Paulo - October 2001


Brazzil
October 2001
Behavior

Dirty Pics

Are the pornographic pictures just a crass photo montage?
The police of Ribeirão Preto want to know and are interviewing
at least ten people who are now accused of mail
violation, defamation and extortion.

Francesco Neves

Despite close to half a million people, Ribeirão Preto, in the interior of São Paulo state, is a city that retains much of the charm of country life. Agriculture and cattle breeding are common activities in the area, which was once known as The Coffee Capital and Brazilian California. Scandal and gossip are mostly things that happen to other people and in other cities. Happened, until some bawdy pictures presenting some of the town's illustrious couples in compromising positions appeared on the Internet. It was not clear at the beginning of the scandal if the images were authentic or photo montages. It didn't matter, however, since the damage had already been done when those portrayed in the images went to court to try to prove their innocence.

For weeks, in July and August, the naughty pictures seemed to be the only subject Ribeirão-Pretanos had to talk about. It all started when some pictures were stolen from a computer. Soon after, people started to receive in their e-mails a collection of images: well behaved couples in a family barbecue, a group at a nudist beach watching some girls doing strip tease, and then a series of photos with familiar faces showing hardcore scenes, including lesbianism, fellatio and group sex. Most of the images, at least those in the barbecue and on the nude beach, were real, confirmed the people shown in them. But the more risqué stuff, they asserted, was a forgery. Among those exposed in the pictures was an economist (his father is former congressional representative João Cunha) and his architect wife plus an entrepreneur (his father owns a school with 10,000 students) and his wife, who was a teacher in the family's school. The implicated, all in their 20s, are rich and well known in the region. Two traditional families were the main culprits: the Cunhas and the Spinellis.

On September 5, the Ribeirão Preto police presented a report signed by three veteran experts stating that the pornographic pictures were digitally fabricated. The experts, José Lopes Zarzuela, from USP's (Universidade de São Paulo) Law School; Dirceu Carlos Uccelli, who works for the Federal Justice and José Barth, from the State Justice had a unanimous conclusion: "From all that was given as evidence the suspected pieces revealed, after examination, to be forgeries. The modifications were done without the due and accurate technical criteria dictated by the digital art, which, with the proper software that now exists in the market, under the command of an able person, would make such montages imperceptible."

The experts' findings were included in the enquiry being made by the police, who are interviewing at least ten people who are now accused of mail violation, defamation and extortion. Twenty photos were analyzed, but rumors have it that as many as 800 of these pictures exist. According to Antonio Eugênio Minghini, the attorney for those shown in the pictures, "the families of the victims hired the experts in an effort to try to stop the spread of the rumor. They are distraught and if we had to wait for the Justice, it would take a long time."

The case became known as the "suruba dos ricos" (the riches' gangbang) and pictures from other people who don't live in the city started cropping up. Even pictures taken from Brazilian Playboy were added to the sexual imbroglio. According to the police, the same people who stole the pictures and spread them throughout the Internet tried to extort half a million reais ($179,000) from the victims in exchange for not divulging the images. Protecting the identity of the accused, the Brazilian media presented the economist ARDC and entrepreneur NDSJ saying: "The pictures in which we appear in compromising situations are obviously montages. The criminals used our faces taken from stolen pictures and placed them over other images."

NDSJ talked about the pictures taken at the nudist beach: "I went there with my wife and we took pictures that I kept in my computer. This is something intimate we did and it is nobody's business. How could I imagine that someone would get into my computer and manipulate the pictures? After the photos appeared, people started saying we were involved with drugs, that we were homosexuals, that my wife received a standing ovation in a local restaurant and so on." By the way, his wife, who teaches elementary school, decided to take a vacation while things cool off a little.

ARDC says that a hacker stole the pictures from a computer he has at home, but in another version circulating in the streets of Ribeirão Preto, the laptop computer was taken to a repair shop and there one technician copied the pictures and decided to blackmail the economist.

The compromising pictures were taken off an Internet site that was showing them, but at least one webmaster had already copied the whole enchilada, distributing it in a zip file on http://www.geocities.com/malloryknox77/   Apparently, other entrepreneurial minds created CD-ROMs containing the same material with some 80 spicy images being sold for 20 reais ($7) in the streets of Ribeirão.

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