Multiple Faces Detected
January 21st, 2026
A Japanese woman involved in an international romance scam was forced to send more than $30k in a military sextortion scam.
Internet scams are on the rise. According to the FTC, Americans lost more the $770 million in romance scams in 2021. One of the most devastating scams driving the majority of the loss of funds was romance scams. Romance scams are a type of catfish scam where the criminal adopts a fake identity online. They then mass messages people on social media in hopes of becoming someone’s online love interest. Once they’ve gained their victim’s trust, they scam them in a wide variety of ways. One of the most common ways is sextortion.
Japanese Woman Became the VIctim of An International Sextortion
Shuri is a 50-year-old married woman living in Japan. One day she met a man named James on the popular social media app Tiktok. James direct messaged Shri, immediately telling her how beautiful she was. James proceeded to shower her with affection. Shuri was swept off of her feet by James. This is because there was a stark difference between Shuri’s communication with James and her communication with her husband. Shuri says she’s never had anyone talk to her the way James did. She attributes the differences in the displays of affection to Japan’s famously stoic culture.
Shari recalls her online relationship with James feeling like a fairy tale, but the relationship was in fact, a classic romance scam. James used common romance scam techniques like love bombing, and stealing a military persona to woo his victim and pretend to be in a foreign country. He even used a common story that romance scammers concoct about being deployed in Turkey and needing help with fees.
Military Scam
The classic military scam script starts with the basic romance scam tactics like love bombing but quickly gets to the requests for money. The scammer’s claim that they need money for “leave fees” and “Employee replacement fees”. Neither of which is a real fee imposed by the Us Military.
Through these claims, the scammer (who chose the alias James) got Shari to send him thousands of dollars. These claims and requests come with a host of foraged documents. One of with was claiming to be from the Immigration Bureau of Japan.
Once Shuri began to get suspicious, the scammer threatened to use the nude pictures she sent him months ago against her. James said that he would send the nude pictures to her friends, family, and all of her colleagues at work. Fearing that her reputation would be damaged, and even that her husband would find out about her secret internet activities, she decided to give in. But eventually, Shuri reached out to Socialcatfish.com, and through our search engine, we were able to find out the truth about the man in the photos.
The Real Man In The Photos
The real man in the photos is a gay man living who works in a gay bar and maintains a presence on social media. when he was informed about the scams taking place with his images, he declined to publicly comment.
Next, we sent a tracker to the scammer using the stolen photos and running the messaging app being used to blackmail Shuri. Once the tracker came back, we got two hits on the location. One in Singapore, and the other in Lagos Nigeria. Confirming beyond a shadow of a doubt that “James” Was in fact a scammer.
Once we had this information, it was time to come up with a plan for how to get out of the sextortion scenario. For this, or team came up with a plan. We photoshopped text messages of Shuri sending the images to her friends and family. Telling them that she was being blackmailed and it was the only way to not have to send the scammer money. Then Shuri could safely black the scammer on all platforms.
Conclusion
If you think you are someone you know is involved in a romance scam, run a reverse image search on their pictures to find out the truth in just minutes.
