A Fake Instagram Sugar Daddy Imitates a Premier League Executive to Entrap Women.
On Instagram, a lot of “silver foxes” end up being fraudsters. A false sugar daddy scammer was exposed by the Cybernews research team, who are now disclosing the telltale indicators of other scams.
The standard sugar daddy scam consists of swindlers approaching women online under the false identity of older, powerful males. They lure the naïve victim into a trap by offering to pay a considerable amount of money in exchange for the company.
We came across a cyber fraud case in which a person was imitating a rich identity who invested in Football Clubs to entrap women in a thousand dollars scam. The woman wasn’t ready for it. But how did things go? Let’s read this article.
Once you pay me first, I’ll make you a fortune.
In the first phase, the fraudster asks the victim for companionship just for the exchange of money. The fraudster was using the name “Victor Mendez” on Instagram. He sent a screenshot of a “Pending Transaction” involving the amount “$3,000” through PayPal to the victim.
The fraudster asked the victim for a $100 bitcoin via Mercuryo in exchange for the payment he showed to the victim in his crypto wallet. For that, a fake claim of user verification and clearance of transaction happened.
The playbook con. The first to act is the fake sugar daddies, who frequently deposit a significant sum of money as promised before asking their sugar babies to repay the extra cash. They frequently demand around $1,000. It was ‘only’ $100 in this instance.
Naturally, the cheques that were deposited into the victims’ accounts bounced, and the alleged sugar daddies disappeared as they were not looking for a partner to begin with.
Resources
“It is common for fraudsters to request payment via bitcoin as it makes it particularly hard to track down since using bitcoin conceals the senders’ and recipients’ real-life identities from the public, which means that even if the transaction is put on-chain (in the blockchain), both parties’ identities remain secure and secret.”
Fraudster trying to be Football King
Fortunately, the victim in question is wise enough not to fall for any of those fake sugar daddies—or real ones, for that matter—who could have hit on her Instagram door. She decided to warn other prospective victims after being inundated with identical letters from fraudsters imitating silver foxes. She then pointed out the scam to our resources.
A fast reverse-image search revealed that fictitious sugar daddy Victor Mendez was nothing besides a fraud who seemed to have acquired photos from John Textor, a well-known US businessman, entrepreneur, and owner of multiple football clubs.
The investigation revealed that fictitious sugar daddy Victor Mendez was nothing besides a fraud who seemed to have acquired photos from John Textor, a well-known US businessman, entrepreneur, and owner of multiple football clubs.
Textor owns shares in football teams that compete in the top divisions in Brazil, France, and even the Premier League; he now owns 40% of Crystal Palace, an England Team that is currently ranked 12th in the top professional football league.
We have reported Victor Mendez’s Instagram account to the media giant since it solely features images that were taken from the real John Textor. The profile is still working as of the time of writing.
Cyber-hooker blackmail
Scammers start by creating a phony sugar-daddy profile. To gain the trust of their victims, they frequently send money to them.
“Additionally, victims are frequently required to give the scammer their full name, phone number, and email address, alongside their bank account and credit card information. Identity theft and other types of fraud, such as credit card fraud, may result from this.”
Some cases involve fraudsters who will threaten the victim for the private pictures (Explicit Content) to upload online, if the victim doesn’t do anything that the fraudster asks for.
Besides losing money, victims are afraid of getting their confidential data to go public, since the only response from the fraudster would be like – “this is what happens when you play cyber-hooker.”
Sometimes, fraudsters steal victims’ identities or destroy their accounts. The FBI issued a warning against false sugar daddies in 2021, stating that “These gentlemen are very savvy” and that, despite law enforcement’s resources, “it is tough to do.”
Staying safe
- Ignore communications from unknown people, particularly if they don’t have profile pictures and have few or no recent postings.
- Never pay money to or conduct business with anyone you meet online.
- Don’t share your bank information with anyone online.
- Report any unauthorized or suspicious activity on your PayPal or bank account right away.
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