by bookworm_jerrison » Sat Mar 14, 2020 6:33 pm
Hi everyone:
I met "Rita" on Words With Friends. We got friendly and she persuaded me to take a (waist down) photo of myself. The next day she showed me screenshots of our chat and said she would post it to social media and give it to my bosses if I didn't send her $1000 to an account in Nigeria. I was totally panicked so I paid.
Then, after I had paid, she said "now I want $100 a week from now until June, that is all." I was still panicked but I made her a counter offer: $1500 right now, then I block her on all social media, she deletes the picture and she never contacts me again. She agreed to all parts of that right away. We went over the terms many times until she said "look, how many times do I have to say it, I agree!"
Before I sent her the money, I told her that if I ever heard from her again or if I found out that the pic had ever been posted anywhere, I would call the police and the FBI. She said "no no one will find out just send me the money and then we are done." I sent her the money. She asked me to delete our convo history, which I did. She said "okay, one moment." 2 minutes later she came back and said "Okay, we are done, bye" and disappeared. This all happened 3 days ago. I have not heard from her since.
I have since blocked her on all my accounts, changed my profile pics, changed my spam settings and retained what I could about her. I know all of her user names, and I have information about the account to which the money was sent, as well as her Gmail address and her Zynga ID.
She cannot contact me online on any social media. She does not know my address or my phone number, and she does not have my banking information. I didn't send the money straight from my bank but via Western Union, Amazon and Remitly.
I have contacted a lawyer and an investigator. The lawyer said that this was probably a done deal unless Rita ever contacted me again. The investigator said that he could help me get pics removed from social media if anything was ever posted against my will.
She said she knows where I work but she claimed that she had been chatting with my boss and that "he and I are now friends." My boss is a woman.
I don't care about getting the money back (I have some inheritance money and I could spare what she was asking). I don't think she will post anything to social media because she would gain nothing from doing that -- my sense is that she only wanted money and that she gains nothing from just posting a pic. Also, if I understand correctly most social media sites have policies against nudes, so if she ever did try to do that she would just be banned. I also don't see what her incentive is to tell my bosses -- she wouldn't get any more money from me by doing that.
I know the taking the pic was stupid and that I shouldn't have paid, but I absolutely panicked and was terrified about the threats.
So is this over with? What do you all think?