Secret videos "an extortion attempt"

24 Jul 2013

Claims that staff at Sun International secretly recorded videos of visitors to its hotels over a six-year period have been rebuffed by the listed hotel and gaming group as part of an extortion attempt by scam artists.

Sun International was responding to media reports which cited a blog claiming to represent 517 unsuspecting couples who were formulating an alleged US$517m class-action lawsuit against the company.

The blog claims that visitors to the Sun City resort between 2005 and 2011 were filmed by staff members and 52 videos had been sold "to an international porn club".

The blog also says an "aggressive" media and social media campaign would be launched against Sun International, in order to make contact with 200 of these couples who had not yet been identified and to include them in the lawsuit.

Attempts on Tuesday (23 July) to contact the "Sun International Action Group", which claims to be leading the lawsuit and a campaign to boycott the company were unsuccessful.

Sun International spokesman Tamra Veley said: "The company received a number of e-mails since October last year purportedly from a Tim Dailey or a Nayan Naidoo, who, we believe, is the same person".

Spurious claim

Veley said the e-mails claimed Sun International staff had illegally videotaped the intimate moments of visitors to its Sun City complex. The e-mail said it the secret videos would be destroyed once payment of some US$5m was received.

"Naidoo's legal representatives had initially provided an address in New York, which upon investigation turned out to be an office suite operated by a business centre which rents out office space," Veley said.

"In addition, the contact details of Dailey and Naidoo are all gmail.com addresses and are untraceable," she added.

She said that the company was not aware of any video-tapes being made at Sun City.

Sun International appointed both local and international lawyers to advise the company and investigate the accusations.

Veley said despite repeated attempts to contact Dailey and Naidoo, and to request a meeting to provide evidence of the recordings, no response had been forthcoming.

But the company had been informed via e-mail that a class action lawsuit would be instituted with a damages claim of more than US$500m.

Following discussions with the South African Police Service, the police had advised that as the complainant had not come forward, "they have nothing to investigate".

"Sun International views these allegations as spurious," Veley said, adding that the company is the target of an extortion attempt.

Source: Business Day via I-Net Bridge

Source: I-Net Bridge

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