All that heartbreak for $1,000.
A couple mourning the loss of their 11-month-old daughter was blackmailed by a woman who agreed to return the couple’s phone, which had sentimental photos of their terminally ill daughter on it, for $1,000, the Mirror reports.
The woman, Siti Nurhidayah Kamal, 24, an Uber Eats delivery cyclist, pleaded guilty to blackmail this week in an Australian court.
The couple, Jay and Dee Windross, received Kamal’s message claiming to have found the phone through WhatsApp only 21 minutes after their daughter Amiyah had died due to an undiagnosed neurological disorder.
The deceitful message from Kamal said: “Please I’m begging you. I don’t want to sell and erase all your memory. I promise you, I am an honest person.”
However, it turns out Kamal never had the phone.
Dee Windross lost her phone in the bathroom of a mall in Melbourne in April.
The couple launched a public plea on social media in the hope someone would return the phone and explained it had photos and videos on it of Amiyah, who lived 200 out of 330 days in the hospital, the U.K. Sun reports.
In April, Jay Windross wrote on Facebook about the attempted blackmail saying, “While trying to spend every emotional minute with Amiyah and giving her all of my attention, I’m also responding to someone claiming to have our phone with all the memories of her,” adding, “Not only was it a complete and utter waste of my time, it was interrupting my final moments with my dying daughter.”
The couple still does not have the phone.
After pleading guilty to blackmail, Kamal was denied bail and will return to court for sentencing.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
