A Hilarious (and Slightly NSFW) Recent Attempt to Scam Me on Instagram

Content warning: I talk about breasts a lot. Not in general, but in this post, for reasons that will become clear. I also have no choice but to mention cocks.

Utah's uniquely gullible population has long made it the fraud capital of the United States. Almost immediately after I moved here twelve years ago, I got a text that claimed to be from Wells Fargo and requested my credit card number. I ignored it. A few days later, I saw a newspaper headline about this scam going around Utah, and I thought, "Wait, people actually fell for that?" Several years later, an Amway (more like Scamway) salesbro tried to recruit me after I sat next to him in a church foyer, and I asked all the questions and met with him multiple times because I was unbearably lonely. That was at the beginning of 2020. Then the funniest thing happened. So I share the following story not just because it's interesting, but as a warning to people who are dumber than me. Or just hornier. But that's kind of the same thing. Anyway, last weekend a profile by the name of Mary Chance followed me on Instagram, I followed them back, and they messaged me.

Of course I was immediately suspicious that a random French woman on the internet who looks like this would take such an unsolicited interest in getting to know me...

...but I couldn't immediately prove that the profile wasn't for real. I reverse searched a couple of their pictures, but all I got was different pictures of similar but different blonde women. I thought it was weird that they only had five pictures, all of them uploaded in 2021, four of them on the same day, the last one on December 25, yet lacking any kind of Christmas imagery or traditions that I'm familiar with...

...but on the other hand, that reduced the likelihood that a scammer had created this account and was still using it to scam people all this time later. It was probably a real account that recently got hacked. With that being the case, I feel a little creepy posting these pictures here, but anyone else who investigates the Mary Chance profile needs to be able to find this post. Here's another one.

Fortunately, Instagram offers some information that can help determine whether an account has been hacked. Crap. I just went to grab a screenshot and found that the account either disappeared or blocked me. But the other day, I clicked on "About this account" and it said that the name of the account had been changed one time. Very helpful. I can't imagine why it might also be helpful to know what the change was or when it was made, and obviously neither can the brilliant minds at Instagram. Anyway, this situation didn't make sense, but I went along with it because stranger things have happened than a random French woman on the internet who looks like this taking such an unsolicited interest in getting to know me. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but they must have. Maybe I had finally found favor with God. And I figured I had nothing to lose because I had determined in advance that I wouldn't send them money under any circumstances.

Also, they almost immediately said "if you don't mind I would like to have this see you when I'm at home I would like to know you better and be reassured to know with whom I speak[.]" I figured it would be really hard for a fake profile to keep up the charade over video chat. And this is where the scammer was probably thinking, Actually, it's gonna be super easy, barely an inconvenience. But I was right and they were wrong.

More like Instascam. What I saw on the screen was almost certainly a prerecorded video. It was ridiculously pixelated, had no audio, and depicted a woman was very obviously not the same as the one in the pictures. I guess I was supposed to be too fixated on her upper torso to notice, or maybe the scammer just thinks all white girls look the same.

Our budding relationship escalated quickly.

I didn't used to have the slightest interest in women's breasts. Just like with Pokémon Go and Tiger King, all the hype only pushed me away, because that's the kind of person I am. I did like chicken breasts, though I was really more of a leg man. If I recall correctly, the first time I saw women's fully exposed breasts (not counting repressed memories from infancy) was in eighth grade Global Studies class. I heard the backstory later from veteran teacher Mr. Morrison. Allegedly, first-year teacher Mr. Twyman came to him and asked if he could borrow a video about Africa. Mr. Morrison said sure. Mr. Twyman just grabbed one. So we watched it in class, and we saw some kind of tribal ceremony with topless woman dancing. And I thought, That's it? Those tubes of fat flopping around are what all the other boys go crazy over? You've got to be kidding me. But that wasn't the most memorable part of the video. Some men dragged an obviously terrified goat to the front of the ceremony. The classroom got tense. Mr. Twyman reassured us, "It's okay, kids, the goat doesn't get hurt." That statement contained false or misleading information.

As a college freshman, I confided to a friend whom I'd persuaded to be my free therapist because she was majoring in Psychology that I didn't care about the size of women's breasts. Right as I said that, I noticed for the first time ever that she was rather flat-chested, and I thought Crap, she thinks I'm talking about her. But she just smiled and shared the wisdom that she'd gotten from some old man: if they're big enough to hold up a strapless top, they're big enough. A couple years later, desperately wanting to be normal, I borrowed some issues of Women's Health from another friend (who claimed to not know why they were delivered to his house), and I stared at the (clothed) breasts inside until I found them appealing. I still can't believe that worked. It didn't work when I tried it with... other things. By the way, I wasn't impressed with the magazine's mixed message of "You're healthy just the way you are, but also you should look like these hot skinny models."

So when the scammer calling themself Mary Chance asked if I would like to see their beautiful breasts, the truthful answer was yes. I hesitated because the religion I spent most of my life in taught me that seeing her beautiful breasts would be sinful and that I should exercise moral courage by lying and saying no. But then, the religion I spent most of my life in also taught me that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were good people, and it also opposed every major social justice movement in American history, and it also broke the law in multiple countries to conceal its hoarding of obscene wealth, and it also protects child abusers, so I have a hard time caring very much about its views on morality anymore. Of course that just validates orthodox members' certainty that I left so I could sin without guilt, and/or that I fell under Satan's influence as soon as I did. Hence my noncommittal response.

The only other person who ever wanted to see my nice cock was a guy I used to go to church with. I certainly didn't believe that a random French woman on the internet who looks like those two different people would take such an unsolicited interest in seeing it. So there's the trap. The scammer gets footage of my nice cock, then shares it to the internet and demands money to take it off. Of the internet, I mean. Except even if I had been stupid enough to take the bait, I would have been too self-conscious, so it wasn't going to happen. For context, when they said "Drop you cam" I thought they meant turn it off, so I did, and then they turned theirs off, and I used that as an excuse to sidestep the question about whether I wanted to see their boobs.

Oof. They were getting mad now, like they thought I owed them something just because they gave me something that I didn't ask for. I'm guessing this scam is never run in reverse - showing a woman someone's nice cock and requesting her beautiful breasts. Most women would immediately block the cock.

Best Chance, apparently. I actually thought it just a little odd that a French woman was named Mary instead of Marie, but that didn't quite rise to the level of red flag, and maybe I committed a microaggression just by thinking it. Not all Hispanic women are named Maria either. Anyway, we switched over to Skype, and the quality of the silent prerecorded video somehow became even worse.

Now that there was a confirmed 0% chance of Mary Chance being real, I wish I'd been wittier and more assertive. I wish I'd said, "Respectfully, Mademoiselle, your breasts are more pixelated than the ones that appear for about ten seconds in the Naughty mode of the 1992 computer game Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender. As you can see, my video quality is normal for 2023, and sending you my high-resolution cock would hardly make a fair trade." Instead, I kept being nice and wishy-washy while the scammer kept being impatient and unhinged.

Sheesh, I haven't seen a fictional woman this horny since I had to read Carmen Maria Machado's stories for graduate school. I lied twice here. Skype wasn't frozen - though I thought the awful quality made that plausible - and my job interview wasn't for another fifty-three minutes, and it was over the phone. Except the scheduled phone call never came through, though the recruiter sent a screenshot confirming that she had made it, so that was the final straw for me with Republic Wireless. It served me well for a few years, but it turned to crap as soon as Dish purchased it. I did a few minutes of research and decided to switch to Mint Mobile. Though I can't yet vouch for its quality of service, it allows calling and texting over WiFi, a feature Dish got rid of that probably would have prevented my problem. It also has an online tech support chat, another feature that Dish got rid of. I can't imagine why anyone having issues with their phone might need a way to contact tech support besides calling them, and obviously neither can the brilliant minds at Dish. But here's the kicker: I'll now get 5 GB of data per month for $15 instead of 1 GB for $19.99. It will be really hard for me to even use 5 GB a month - no, I'm not going to say "Actually, it's gonna be super easy, barely an inconvenience," even though I wish I could, because it wouldn't be true, especially since my neighbor gave me access to xfinity WiFi hotspots to make up for the internet going out after he didn't pay his utility bill - but that's the lowest amount Mint Mobile offers, and it's still cheaper, so I'm not complaining. The recruiter let me reschedule the interview, so I deleted the passive-aggressive comment I was going to make about her not calling me.

wHy DiD yOu Do ThIs To Me. So manipulative!

They had a rather odd work schedule for a hairdresser in Las Vegas, too.

dOn'T sAy AnY mOrE bAnAl WoRdS tO mE. I'm dying.

Mary Chance probably targeted me because I look lonely. They may have also noticed that I live in the fraud capital of the United States. ​I feel rather smug about how badly they misunderestimated my intelligence. If something like this happens to you, I hope you didn't need me to warn you that it's a trap, but if you did, you're welcome. Of course, in the near future, scammers will be able to use AI to generate flawless fake profiles with fake photorealistic images and high-quality videos that match and have audio and respond in real time. But they won't need to go to all that trouble to get footage of your nice cock, because they'll be able to generate that with AI too. I miss the good old days when the scariest technology was nuclear weapons.