Disclaimer: In Real Life is a platform for everyday people to share their experiences and voices. All articles are personal stories and do not necessarily echo In Real Life’s sentiments.
I was working late one night when I scrolled through my phone idly, exhausted from poring over hours spreadsheets. I got a notification from my Telegram.
“Sugar Mommies in your area! Join now!”
I ignored the spam message as usual, and got up to make myself a cup of milo. Who falls for these kinds of low level scams? Anyone could see that it was fake.
I mulled to myself a bit more.
Wouldn’t it be funny if I wasted this scammer account’s time by talking to them instead of them cheating some lonely wage slave out of his hard earned salary?
So I saved the number from Telegram and started texting it.
How the conversation started
“Hello. How do I join this Sugar Mommy thing?”
“Are you here for the hookup where we give sugar mummy who pay you $20,000 per night sir..”
The response was at 4:20am in the morning, so I was asleep. I even got a missed call from them at 4.38. Talk about pushy.
The next morning, I checked my phone groggily and responded with, “Yes, I’m interested.”
So, “Amira” asked me to fill out a form with my details. I put down a fake name and fake job.
Next, she (it could have been a ‘he’) shared over pictures of women and asked me to pick out the one who looked the most appealing.
I picked a picture at random and she sent me a bank account to bank in the “membership fee”.
So it turns out the scam was pretty basic. You give them a membership fee of RM150, and they promise to connect you to the sugar mommy of your dreams.
Of course, this person doesn’t exist, and you’ve just sent a couple of hundred bucks to a random account, most likely never to be heard of again.
She Also Sent Me Testimonials Showing Guys Posing With Stacks Of Cash
The scammer also has a list of “testimonials” from “real clients” — random stanky-ass looking dudes posing with wads of cash like they’re in a rap video.
(If you recognise yourself in this, feel free to message me so that I will take down your photo to protect your privacy)
The whole operation felt like a typical script telemarketers use for an online sales pitch. If you think about it, phone scammers use a similar modus operandi to telemarketers.
I tried to ask for some personal info about the person behind the phone screen.
“That’s really sweet but what are your life goals with the money you save doing this? Do you have family at home to send it back to?” I texted over.
I was trying to figure out if I could get the scammer to let slip who they really are behind the phone screen.
“Who are you please?” She texted back.
Oops. I’ve raised her suspicions.
So I gave Amira a sob story of my family situation and how I needed money urgently.
I told her how I lost my leg in a motorcycle accident, my father has cancer, my mother has leukemia, and my sister is in jail for money laundering.
Her sympathy for my fake story seemed fairly genuine, but after a few words of “So sorry to hear that” it was back to business: Bleeding the poor sucker (in this case, me) dry.
I found it fishy that she wouldn’t give me any info on the sugar mommy. So I decided to investigate a bit further.
I reverse searched the Sugar Mommy photos
I did a Google reverse image search on the Sugar Mommy pictures she showed me. All you need to do is upload the picture to Google Image Search and it will match your image with its database using face recognition software.
Surprise, surprise — the pictures were already widely circulated online. Some were in a Facebook group called “Gadis mantap di malaysia” (Solid Girls In Malaysia)
(If you recognise yourself in this, feel free to message me so that I will take down your photo to protect your privacy)
Scrolling through the page, it looked like someone decided to save pictures of women’s profile pictures online and upload them all in a folder for random strangers to ‘thirst’ comment over.
The pictures were being dissected and commented on with sexually suggestive undertones, some even detailing explicit fantasies.
(If you recognise yourself in this, feel free to message me so that I will take down your photo to protect your privacy)
The scammer probably came across this page and figured out a way to use the pics as bait for the sugar mommy scam.
These pictures were almost certainly uploaded without the consent of their owners. Did they even know their photos were being used like this?
How many photos of women online had been downloaded by some creep and uploaded to a random Facebook group, only to end up as bait for a Sugar Mommy phone scam?
So I confronted the scammer with this info.
“Btw is this one of your sugar mummies?”
“Yes sure”
“How come she’s on this fb page?”
The scammer pretended to play the fool, and (rather naively too) told me to “forget about it”, lol.
I wanted to go even further and try to meet this scammer, but my calls were rejected, obviously.
At this point, I lost interest in exposing this scammer and forgot about the convo. When I checked back on it a few days later, I received this message:
What I learnt from this conversation:
My suspicion is that it’s a scam ring and the leader behind the whole operation just gives them a list of pictures and a script to follow.
They collect bank transfers from horny individuals who are too horny to think about how basic the scam is.
The thing about voluntary bank transfers is that it was done voluntarily, so the bank does not notice if you are sending over wads of your own savings to another account.
Scams these days can’t siphon money directly from your account, so they trick you into GIVING the money to them.
Unfortunately in Malaysia, these are small fry and the police don’t have time to chase these small-time crooks.
It goes without saying that the moment someone you don’t know asks for money to be sent to an unfamiliar bank account, it’s a scam.
Suffice to say, the internet landscape is a Wild Wild West, so buyer beware. That’s why it’s important for us to raise awareness about these issues with our family and friends.
If anyone has ideas on how to kantoi these scammers, let me know.
For more stories like this, read: 5 Alarming Scams that Fooled Malaysians Over and Over Again and I Got Catfished On A Dating App In Malaysia And It Broke My Heart
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