The fine art of guilt tripping when your victims get suspicious

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In the following days there were logistical problems with drivers, accusations from Aaron that they’d breached the NDA they’d signed and eventually they were asked to pay $800 cash to their driver for an overtime fee. Carley refused. That's when things turned sour.

“They kind of bully you into thinking that you’re not good enough for the project. It’s almost like an emotional warfare,” says Carley. “She goes into this tangent about how I must not really want this job and I must just be this privileged white girl who doesn’t feel safe or comfortable traveling to Indonesia.”

This made Carley want to prove that she could handle herself, but ultimately it was just another ploy to keep her on the project and try to extract more money out of her. She refused to pay any more money and soon enough both Wendi and Aaron disappeared completely. Carley never heard from them again and never recovered the money.

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"...a couple of photographers from San Francisco who have around 80K Insta followers each, were sent an almost identical email by "Wendi." Their experience turned out almost exactly the same as Carley’s: The scammers had intimate knowledge of their respective portfolios, they showered them with praise and offered a paid photography job in Indonesia.

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(The photographers) found themselves in Jakarta feeling suspicious about the project, Wu snapped a photo of their driver and his license plate.

The next day the scammer called Wu in a rage, accusing him of being “racist” and “not in touch with [his] Asian side,” which was a particularly barbed comment as Wu is Taiwanese. This put the pair on the defensive, to the point where they agreed to pay another photography permit fee in cash to the driver. Wu says that this was a tactic to accuse them of wrongdoing, prompting them to defend themselves, then to casually ask for more money. “It totally worked,” Wu later wrote in a blog post.