It Takes a Scammer to Catch a Scammer (3)

The world of social media was always overflowing with drama.

A world where everyone scrolled through shorts and prowled their feeds every single day, hunting for that next hit of dopamine.

And now, an issue had exploded.

Callout.

Evidence.

Accusation.

As always, people went hunting for something to chew on, tear apart, and savor. And when the something in question was financial fraud, they came running even harder.

Kang Sunwoo.

The callout from someone who had simply written what looked like their real name spread almost instantly. The account had zero followers and should have sunk without a trace, yet the moment the posts went up, related threads flooded every community board.

It started on the galleries illustrators frequented and spilled all the way into general humor sites. The speed was so unnatural it almost felt like the original poster had spun up alt accounts just to seed the posts themselves.

At first, interest was lukewarm. The posts were long even if broken into short lines, and most people scrolled past.

The second they saw the amount and the method, though, people sat up straight.

Ordinary people were stunned that this kind of fraud even existed. To them, AI art was the obvious garbage that showed up in ads — the kind anyone could spot at a glance.

Conversation among regulars gravitated less toward the specific scammer and more toward the sheer audacity of a 2-million-won click-scam. Ordinary people reacted that way.

The professionals, the people actually in the industry, reacted differently.

People who already knew the person being called out. People who saw the evidence and joined the public execution without hesitation. People who questioned the messenger. Analysis flew in every direction.

The fire caught faster than expected. Voices demanding an explanation from the accused — to prove the AI-usage execution was false — grew louder by the minute.

For fun? Was it really okay to call someone's carefully made art "AI" just because some random person decided to take a shot? There were people who thought that way, sure.

But anyone who actually looked at Je-Zzos's portfolio and the points Kang Sunwoo had raised had to swallow hard for a moment. That metallic, coppery taste on the tongue.

This wasn't just an illustration. It was the death cry of a scammer trying to snatch an unthinkable 2,000,000 won from a fresh-faced adult just starting out in the world.

And right in the middle of the explosion:

The accused had appeared.

"Wow. Instead of just winning by posting first, he opens with a lawsuit declaration."

The second I saw Je-Zzos's post, I flopped back onto the mattress. It was still just a cheap bare mattress with no frame, but watching the retweets refresh at lightning speed on my phone was enough to wipe the fatigue clean away.

"Lawsuit threats really are the scammer's favorite all-purpose sword."

Legal action. Lawsuit. They work. For ordinary people who have never once set foot inside a courthouse in their entire lives, a lawsuit attack is genuinely effective. Even third parties get that uneasy feeling of not wanting to get dragged into someone else's mess. People will click their tongues and go "tsk tsk" about an incident, but almost none of them actually want to become a witness or a party to it.

Unless someone has already steeled themselves with the resolve of I'm putting that bastard in prison no matter what, most people simply stay out of it.

The ones who still jump in even after a lawsuit declaration shows up fall into a few categories.

People who beat the target with nothing but pure facts.

People who don't care if they get sued and just dump raw emotion and dopamine all over the place.

Or industry people who are legitimately furious about catching stray bullets from this kind of fraud.

It wasn't quite the kind of firepower that would land a cheerful "AI Illustrator Suspicion" thread on the community best-of boards, but the kindling was burning nicely. I had deliberately controlled the heat. Solid enough evidence that even an unknown callout account named Kang Sunwoo could get the story circulating through the communities — while still leaving the scammer just enough room to make excuses and dig himself deeper, so the issue would keep expanding.

And then I would use that issue so that I, Eun Harin, could clearly profit from it.

"This is exactly when you have to jump in first."

I lit this fire. "I made this floating crowd, so I get to eat it."

I wasn't about to hand the tourist-attraction effect of my own fireworks show over to anyone else.

"Alright then..."

Today's content.

Yuk Jeong-ho, a man who had recently become a fan of the streamer Final Boss Parrot (hereafter FBP), had been watching her broadcasts so often he half-jokingly called himself a subordinate parrot.

A concept stream run by someone with real skill. He didn't know much about PoChamps, but he studied while watching and threw himself into FBP's streams completely. Why use that technique there? Why make that call at that moment? Why build the party that way?

It absolutely was not because of the cosplay photo sitting in the bottom-right corner of the screen. If all he wanted was that, he could just follow spicy big-sister accounts on social media and cycle through them. Of course, if FBP ever made a separate social media account and posted photos, he would hit follow without hesitation — but Yuk Jeong-ho repeated the mantra to himself over and over.

I am not watching a girl cam. I am watching a half-cam skill streamer.

In that spirit he had even gotten into flame wars with the small elite group of fans on the community boards. How long is she going to keep doing PoChamps? What comes after PoChamps? He was definitely not recommending content because he wanted to see more cosplay.

Themed NIKKE Goddess of Victory Let's Go—

While the parrots were spinning happy little theories about what the next content would be, a new stream title appeared.

"Huh?"

He had been hoping for a title like PoChamps — Today as Jukdam!! and a stream where she showed a little skin, but what appeared was completely unexpected.

What is this? Clickbait? Is she already pulling low-tier aggro like this?

Happy circuits started spinning. YouTube channel launch? Gained enough confidence from half-cam to show her face?

Despair circuits started spinning. Did someone dig up her ID and send harassment DMs? Did someone take the cosplay photos and make AI nudes?

Those idiots! We were supposed to keep the promotion suppressed and quietly enjoy our own little cosplay streamer showing off every female character under the sun!

"Don't tell me the heavy users reported her...?"

Ah. So that was it. She had finally gotten reported. She claimed she stayed within platform guidelines on the intensity, but...

"They were pretty big, yeah."

FBP's stream pockets were simply too large to talk about in terms of ordinary intensity.

"Tsk..."

Aaah, so this is how I lose another small streamer again.

Yuk Jeong-ho steeled himself to accept whatever came next with humility. If it was just aggro, he would immediately dump a big Biz donation. If it was something bad, he would send comforting "there there" Biz—

"Huh?"

A somewhat rambling voice, flustered yet somehow managing to keep talking.

"Uh, um."

Half-cam and VTuber. If you ride that line wrong, doesn't it turn into poison—

"Huh?"

Je-Zzos? What the hell is that sh—

"...Oh, shit."

The moment he saw the other log warriors' instant reactions in chat, Yuk Jeong-ho sat up straight.

"This is straight-up UFC."