Instagram said it has shut accounts used to intimidate and extort witnesses in Baltimore criminal …

Instagram said it has removed four Baltimore-based accounts that were intimidating people who allegedly cooperated with police. The Sun identified a collection of pages circulating in recent months that posted pictures of people along with court or police paperwork showing that they had spoken to investigators. At least one page, taken down in recent weeks, openly extorted people by saying that it would remove information in exchange for money. “These accounts violate our policies, and we have removed them accordingly,” said Liza Crenshaw of Instagram Communications. The most active current page had more than 6,300 followers. The person who ran the account, whose identity is unknown, told The Sun in a series of direct messages that “even if I delete my page, another will replace me.” No one locally has faced criminal charges in relation to the pages. In Philadelphia in 2013, authorities were able to identify the person running a similar Instagram site – it was a teenager – and filed criminal charges of witness intimidation and terroristic threats. He received four years in juvenile detention. In a statement, an FBI spokesperson said: “The FBI is aware of witness intimidation accounts but as you know we can neither confirm…
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