recovery and reassurance

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!

I didn't deactivate facebook at that time

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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.

Not following the steps as you should would always expose you to such incidents.

Similar experiences happened before. Sometimes it was the same scammer, but there were new ones having no idea that the victim was scammed before and learned from that experience.

Consider anything used with a scammer compromised and not safe for future use.

Attention, in the last 15 days I was the victim of sextortion and I sent the scammers around 300$, however, I found this site and finally got my hopes up. I disabled my facebook and instagram accounts, however they found an account of a friend of mine and apparently they have saved it. After disappearing from the e-mail (where we communicated), they have already sent some messages that I don't want to open, because I can't. The fact is that my social networks are excluded and I asked my friend to leave his facebook account completely private, change all the preferences, change everything and I've already tried to find his user there with a fake account and I couldn't. The question is, do you guys think I'm safe? Because they still send me e-mails, and I don't open them. Thank you very much, together I hope we can help more people who go through this at such vulnerable times. Should I open the emails?

No, do not open the E-mails. You must maintain total silence.
No contact plus no money and the scammer will move on.

Hi,

I was scammed almost a year ago. I was on a dating app. I deleted all of my social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, email address, etc.) and never went back (social media detox has surprisingly been good). I didn’t pay the scammer any money.

I am now wondering is it safe to go back on the dating site? I’m scared if the scammer is still on the site and sees my pictures they may remember me and send out my video. Is this just living in the fear or should I just avoid that dating site for good, to be on the safe side?

Your advice and help is greatly appreciated. Thank you so much for this community. It has been very helpful with my recovery and has provided tremendous amount of support and reassurance.

You need to decide if the fear of that scammer finding you again is bigger than the wish of meeting someone online.

Please keep in mind that anything used with a scammer needs to be considered compromised and not safe for a future use. That includes not only your email address, phone number or dating / social profile, but also any of the pictures you were using while dealing with that scammer.

Hello, I was scammed two weeks ago (typically blackmail scam/sextortion went from Omegle-instagram-google hangouts). Unfortunately I panic paid $300 dollars but then I quickly blocked them when they asked for more and haven’t heard anything in these two weeks. Everything is deactivated. I’m so afraid about this resurfacing a few years from now and Im having trouble sleeping at night. I feel like I can never be found on the internet or have a digital presence anymore in case the scammer tries to come back for me and see what I’m up to. I see all the posts about reassurance and it makes me feel better but do all of this still apply in the current age with cloud storage and such? Please any advice or support will be very welcomed. Thank you

Not much has changed during the last few years in the way the scam works or how to deal with the scam. if you have gone to our Blackmail site and done all of the steps and read the entire group of slides it will tell you how long to stay off the internet and how to re-enter the internet after the waiting period. You can get there by clicking the bubble above:

do all of this still apply in the current age with cloud storage and such?

Yes.

The scammers are not at that level (yet). They are busy scamming 40-50 people at least each day - no time for saving much. In some of their countries, they may end up in jail if caught with such footage.

Not hearing anything in two weeks is a good sign.

Learn how to be safe online, if you decide you want to be online, and you will be fine.

Thank you both so much for your replies. I apologize greatly in advance if this is redundant (i know in the steps it says don't ask if they'll post the video down the line) but in all your years of doing this, have you ever had even a single case in which the video does resurface after a few months/years? assuming all steps are done and maintained correctly. Thank you so much and have a blessed Sunday