by TheOneWhoIsChosen » Sun Jul 25, 2021 5:17 pm
My scam happened at the end of May 2021, it's now nearing the end of july 2021. After the first couple days I hadn't given it much extra thought. I reported it to the police the same morning.
My scammer contacted me through an asian dating app, we went to whatsapp and had the video call there. I wanted to verify the scammer as real so I asked for Instagram - they followed me and got to see who i was following and who followed me. Dang.
Anyway, the scammer uploaded the video to a porn site. I flagged it and got the whole channel he had deleted. After that he messaged ' you are good ' then threatened to send the video on facebook. I did not add the scammer on facebook. So i felt confident they couldn't get to me that way. I didn't deactivate facebook at that time because I have many business things linked to it, and I thought I had overcome it.
It's been 50+ days and something weird happened recently which made me a bit anxious and why i'm writing now. I got a follow request from a girl on Instagram. It was a fake profile clearly.
I did not let them follow me, instead I followed them to see their profile and who they were following. They were following some of my friends.
What I did notice was the way the profile was set up was similar to the way the scammer had set it up. Similar types of pictures, similar biography look (name & emoji after). A couple of my friends who he threatened me before with, were following this account. I deactivated Instagram & changed the username before, I've even deactivated my facebook just now. the scammer previously sent screenshots of him sending the video to friends - which he didn't follow through with (it was on pending). I figure he still has some usernames of my friends - which he can search for on FB. And perhaps find me as a mutual friend. f*ck - anyway it's deactivated now. I quickly gave a different FB profile access to the business stuff and deactivated FB today.
Now it could be 2 things:
1 - a random catfish account who followed a friend of a friend, and somehow randomly ended up following me, after seeing my name being given as a recommendation. That is what the pattern looked like. It was not a deliberate follow of me first. There were about 50 - 70 other accounts followed, then mine was followed after. I didn't accept the follow request. After looking through their followed list, it's what it looks like. I noticed some of the accounts they were following were from morocco. Also, they have not followed all the accounts that they previously followed, just some similar male ones to me. So I could've just randomly been recommended and they pressed follow.
2 - the scammer
the first time around, the scammer created a fake Instagram profile of me and follow requested a bunch of my friends. Together we reported them, and I used a report form from Instagram to get the account deleted.
The part that makes me hopeful is that the scammer blocked me first. They blocked me shortly after the IG account was deleted, and the video upload to the P site was deleted. I blocked them back.
I figure if they still wanted to scam, they would've done it earlier on. Not after 50 days, and not after me feeling as if I've successfully overcome it. This little blip came out of the blue, and has unsettled me a bit. I had forgotten about it 3 days after it happened. Because there's not much more in my power I could've done.
I'd like to know if anyone has experienced anything similar. And a couple of words of reassurance would be nice. I've been sitting here since 10am and it's now 5pm.
THANK YOU FOR READING!