It Takes a Scammer to Catch a Scammer (3)

I was going to take down the outsourcing scammer Je-Zzos.

If all I wanted was to catch him, I could have just used Kang Sunwoo's account to blow the whole thing up in public and called it a day.

But that wasn't going to cut it.

This was my board. My setup. If I didn't walk away with something to show for it, what was the point?

You think I'm doing this for some kind of Good Citizen Award?

My goal was money.

Getting scammed and then shaking him down for a settlement would have been nice in theory, but for amounts this small, the lawyer fees usually end up costing more than the payout.

MCNs exist to handle this kind of thing by proxy, but I'm flying solo.

I'd heard that streamers sometimes had their legal problems handled for them by their MCN or agency. I didn't have one of those, which meant any legal action would fall entirely on me.

Spend months chasing a three-million-won settlement? I'd rather spend that time pulling in three million in donations and picking up modeling gigs on the side.

So instead, I was going to milk this as content — an issue to grow my channel's weight class.

Whether it was Twitter, SNS, or the community boards, I planned to suck up every scrap of traffic as the "victim" of an AI illustrator scam that was easily going to pull three thousand average views.

Right now.

As if a flood of drive-by viewers had poured in.

Fewer lurkers than I expected, honestly.

If I'd known it would be like this, maybe I should have waited until the mood was a little more ripe before going live?

Was I going to end up as the advance scout who just spreads the issue for someone else to cash in on?

No.

This was the kind of opening move a nobody like me made — someone who treasured even community drive-by traffic. Streamers with actual weight didn't casually jump on stuff like this.

Which meant there was a chance other victims — nobodies like me — would show up as my follow-up wave.

A chance.

An issue this size isn't going to drip much traffic downstream.

Victim-driven viewer inflow. I would be the 100% baseline, and everyone after me would see progressively smaller numbers.

So when the viewers were piled in — when even the people already watching my stream had shown up wondering what the hell was going on — I needed to tell the story clean and hard.

"I-I, um."

Unlike Kang Sunwoo.

"I wanted to make a proper VTuber debut, so I was trying to get a VTuber illustration made…"

A completely different energy from my usual streaming tone.

"The person I commissioned the illustration from was Artist Je-Zzos, and then all of a sudden there was this whole public callout and the issue blew up…"

A scam victim. The emotions of someone who'd been taken for a ride — I knew those better than anyone.

I'd spent a past life making other people feel them, after all.

"Th-that can't be right, can it? It's just some internet controversy, right?"

Unlike usual, my voice was down, composure gone, unstable. In short — I was showing weakness.

Naturally, people who wanted to help started showing up.

Sweet older guys looking out for me? Please. The only ones who'd try to put their greasy hands on a fresh-faced social newbie who'd just gotten screwed over by a scam were the types I'd personally dealt with face-to-face.

"Ah, n-no. I haven't tried contacting him yet."

And then, if there was a problem—

"S-surely he's not actually a scammer who'd end up in prison in the future or something, right?"

The curse.

Je-Zzos going to prison was a confirmed future, but at this stage, a lot of people simply couldn't bring themselves to believe it.

Why?

Because issues like this pop up constantly, and most of them either fizzle out fast or get quietly settled behind closed doors.

He wouldn't do real time. Even if he ended up at the police station, he wouldn't be looking at actual prison.

My future sight had been rendered unbelievable by Cassandra's Curse — but underneath that disbelief sat people's collective memory of countless past scam cases just like this one.

Which meant from this point on… I shouldn't be the one driving the stream.

"Wh-what should I do?"

Tch. Sharp little bastard.

This is all just a donation-milking opener, you know.

I hadn't gone full "juice 'em first, victory assured" yet. Deploy that now and I wouldn't even get the Biz I was supposed to be extracting.

There it was.

The moment I put on a helpless little performance, someone tried to take the reins with a donation.

No, wait — why am I calling this a power play? This is a good person trying to help a scam victim, and they're even paying money to do it.

This wasn't a power play. This was a kind stranger walking by, throwing money on top of free advice.

And I'd been waiting for exactly this kind of concrete tip to land.

"Y-yes! I went through a middleman site. Um… is it okay if I say which one?"

There was a problem. If anything went sideways, the legal liability landed on me.

But it was fine. I'd keep it dialed in just short of getting dragged into an actual courtroom fight—

"I-I placed the order here. Ah, sorry — my info is on here too, and also the conversation I had with the artist."

If I played the complete idiot and froze up entirely, the viewers would get frustrated watching. So I walked the line with careful pacing.

Chat that didn't quite fit the moment?

"I did deposit the money, but it was a prepayment through the middleman site, so…"

It was fine. Viewer count: 143. A good sign that drive-by traffic was flowing in.

"I still haven't received any materials… a rough draft did come in, but I don't really know how to judge it."

A rough. Meaning a sketch, an underdrawing. Normally, every stage — rough, line art, coloring — went through client review, and working that way usually meant hand-drawn art.

I knew exactly what they meant. The donation character limit forced them to compress it, but it was the classic used-goods scam move — send a photo of the real thing scraped off the internet as bait.

Debate breaking out in chat, even. The people flooding in from the traffic wave were probably less Je-Zzos victims and more working illustrators, or freelancers who mainly did VTuber three-view commissions, dipping in for a look.

You're paying money just to debate and chat?

This was the victim's room, not your debate club. No — if you're going to do it, at least donate. Or at minimum hit follow on your way out.

Time to take the next step.

I could skip the middle of my prepared scenario and jump straight to the highlight.

"U-um, I'll try calling Artist Je-Zzos on Discord real quick…"

"He asked me to contact him through Discord."

On purpose. The cosplay photos had paid off. For a scammer, he'd done a little homework on his client — looked like he'd seen the clips through my stream.

This is what a honey trap looks like.

Hooked by the silver hair and the chest, he'd handed over a Discord ID that could actually connect a voice call!

"One second. I-I'll try calling him."

A live connection between scam victim and perpetrator. Was there anything more dopamine-charged than that?

No answer.

For a full thirty seconds mid-stream, the live voice track went completely empty and nothing but the Discord voice-call tone filled the air — and the viewer count didn't drop. It only climbed.

"…He's probably busy right now, right?"

Yeah. Busy enough that he couldn't even take a call from Eun Harin.

"Uh…"

The result was in. He'd run. The scammer wasn't taking ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠calls — he was too busy scrubbing his own tracks.

"W-wait a second. He's just not picking up right now, right? That's what this is, right?"

The viewers' reaction was… dry laughter.

If I'd had a little more money and time — if I'd been running a YouTube channel on the side — I would have actually thrown real cash away with the plan of milking three whole episodes out of a "I tried to make a VTuber model and got scammed…." video series.

But I was a nobody streamer who had to pinch every unnecessary expense for lottery tickets, sports betting, and seed money to dump into stocks that would tank someday.

"Ah, the money is… huh? Wait a second. I got an email."

"Not from the artist… it's from the outsourcing middleman site."

I hadn't put it on screen, but it was an official email from the site where I'd been prepared to show the full back-and-forth of the commission if it came to that.

"Uh…"

"…S-so, from the outsourcing site."

I double-checked once, then put the browser window with the email right up on stream.

"It says… 'We have discovered a serious issue with a person whose work was in progress, and are informing you that the work has been cancelled and a full refund will be issued'…"

On purpose — so that everything was visible.

"Uh… why? It was sent to me, and it's an official email—"

"Ah."

I yanked the window down fast. Anyone watching would call it a boneheaded move. But from a viewer's perspective — did they prefer a nobody streamer who did everything airtight, or one who was a little dumb and made the occasional mistake?

Ah! Where else in the world would you find viewers this kind to a nobody streamer? They could have just typed it in chat, and instead they dropped ten thousand on a donation!

Is it because I'm a girl?

If I'd been a guy, I would have just gotten a "ugh, what an idiot."

"Uh, sorry about that. But there probably aren't many people who screenshot it, and… the email is from an account I made fresh just for streaming, so…"

"You don't have to send emails for that — donations work just fine…"

The board was set. The second the full-refund talk came out, the viewer count had ghosted down to double digits — which meant it was time to lock in the real converts from stream traffic, not just issue lurkers.

"Isn't it better to say 'I love you' out loud, in person?"

"When have I ever said I love— …okay, I haven't."

"I-I lo—"

"Excuse me?"

What the hell.

"Um…"

If you're going to crash someone else's hustle and play cuckoo, at least drop ten thousand to do it. I swallowed that line and continued calmly.

"What did you need to contact them about…?"

"Ah."

Hmm. Hmmmm.

Check the viewer count.

I pretended to think while quickly glancing at the numbers. This person had more viewers than me and had been holding a kiss hostage to farm donations — and they'd just interrupted my pitch—

………

"Would a Discord contact work right now?"