by Ryan Ong
GOODBYE gold trading, hello sex-for-credit. E-commerce crimes rose a whopping 65.6% between 2014 and 2015. Chief among these were sex-for-credit scams, which increased tenfold in the same span and are still on the rise. They sure have evolved since the 1990s. Back then an online sex scam was when you used your credit card on an adult site, it corrupted Windows, and made it down shut down repeatedly (i.e. indistinguishable from Windows operating normally.) These days, the scammers have learned to make serious money:
Step 1: Create a fake profile using minimum effort, because let’s face it, you’re not fooling any internet savvy people
The first step is to steal pictures of attractive looking women with cleavage. If you intend to post it on Locanto or Backpage, the pictures don’t even need to look alike, because if you are a scammer you may as well take the “lazy underachiever” thing to its limit.
If the fake profile is for Facebook, more work will be involved. It’s easy to see your fake account was just created. It will be a bunch of maybe five pictures, followed by the start date of the account. You’ll have to pepper it with some fake exchanges (post comments from other fake accounts), in barely comprehensible English.
Or maybe don’t even bother, because like I said, anyone with an ounce of internet savviness won’t fall for it anyway – you’re going for the low hanging fruit here.
After that, slump down in your chair and chug a six-pack of cheap beer. Remind yourself that this is now what constitutes “a day’s work” for you, and feel really sorry about how you’ve hit rock bottom and are apparently starting to dig.
Step 2: Image search the pictures you used for the fake profile
Click “search by image” on Google, and then drag the fake pictures there to search for them. Other websites that use the same image will immediately pop up, thus demonstrating that the photos are stolen, and that the profile is fake.
Wonder why scam victims never seem to think about doing this.
Step 3: Send out feelers
Now pretend you’re MediaCorp and popularise your fake personas. There are a number of ways to do this, all of which are equally pathetic (let’s face it, if you could run a proper social media campaign you’d have an actual job.)
So instead you could:
Do a “drive-by friending”. This is when you send friend requests to strangers, and message them with “Hw R u sweetie I looking for my special one.”
Put up an ad on Locanto or Backpage, under the “personals” section. This should be a string of emoticons, followed by a line like “Super sexxxxy one night only – Lala”.
Trawl Internet forums where adult discussions are common, and post your ads with an offer to “message me”.
Message random people on Skype or WeChat, with a straight up offer of “$X per hour”
99 per cent of these messages will be ignored, or will receive a reply explaining some good ways and places for you to die.
A tiny handful however, will respond and ask to meet up.
Step 4: Decide on a revenue model
This is where your scam pays off, and you successfully disappoint your parents and most of the human race. You now need to decide how exactly you want to make money off this.
The most direct way is to ask the scam victim for money, which you pocket. Old school and simple. But you need to make sure the scam victim never actually sees you (remember, they are expecting a hot girl, not a beer chugging loser in a sweat stained t-shirt and shorts.)
You also want to make sure you can’t be identified to the police, and that the prospective “victim” isn’t, in fact, the police. In fact, you’ll want them to offer “proof” they aren’t police, by asking them to send pictures of their NRIC.
Then you do the following:
Pick a currency – Ideally, you want your victim to pay you in a currency that’s not easy to trace, such as iTunes gift cards or AliPay cards. If you are operating outside Singapore, common alternatives include Bitcoin and currencies in Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMORPGs).
Pad the costs – Start with small amounts and then pad the costs as the victim gets roped in, like a ground floor camera salesman in Sim Lim. So you would put the cost of a meet-up at $200, and then ask for a security deposit of $150 (to make sure you don’t have STDs, hurt the girl, etc.), and then ask for another $200 to pay for a ritzy hotel room, etc. Ideally, you want these small fees to be transferred the moment they’re agreed to. Because the victim will be reluctant to back out later – he’s already paid so much.
Option A: When the victim can’t pay anymore, threaten – If the victim runs out of cash, you have two options. One is to threaten to expose him for trying to solicit sexual services. If he’s a family man or a naive 18 year old, this might work. If he’s not a savoury individual himself, he will probably hunt you down and leave your broken body in a canal. Good luck.
Option B: When the victim can’t pay anymore, ask for their bank card – Ask them to leave their ATM card somewhere you can pick it up, and you will refund them. Tell them you can’t do a direct transfer because you can’t risk being discovered, which is probably the one true thing you will ever say in your life. Pick a good spot to for them to leave their card. An envelope on top of an old phone booth is good. With the officer on duty at the neighbourhood police post is bad.
Once you have the ATM card, you can either empty out what’s in it, or start using the bank account to move laundered money. Loan sharks will pay you for this, because if you are a sex-for-credit scammer they are much smarter than you, and you will go to jail instead of them.
Step 5: Realise this is a pathetic way to make money, and that the police will be showing up soon
The total cost of sex-for-credit scams last year was around $1.6 million, spread over 627 cases. That means you’ve probably made around $2,500. Congratulations, you’re one rung higher than the morons who try to rob a 7-11.
The Singapore Police Force recently posted that a mere runner for the scammers faced 12 months in jail, so if you’re the person actually running the scam you can expect much worse. You should have about a week to prepare, because the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) finds suspicious transactions even faster than a lawsuit finds angry YouTube videos.
Step 6: Go to jail
Explain to the other inmates how you ended up there, with a criminal record that will ruin your life, in order to make $2,500. They will treat you well, seeing as you are mentally infirm and all.
Featured image by Sean Chong.
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