Fell victim of blackmailing today

Today, it happened to me. I usually consider myself a fairly careful and secure person, when it comes to scam attempts. However, I must have been caught in a weak moment…

It all started, when I received a message on DeviantArt. I did not know that this platform even had a chat function, so I saw that I had quite a bunch of unanswered messages. Read through them, most of them were only for thanking me watching their content. But one message wanted to chat and kinda get to know each other, and since I was feeling a bit more depressed and lonely that evening, I thought « yea, why not, I am down. »

Few days later, we decided to switch to discord, for easier communication and we kept talking about stuff. They asked for pics with face eventually, and the idiot that I was, complied. However, we normally kept chatting, they said that I look adorable and stuff. At this point all they knew from me was the country I am from, my age, and of course my DA and discord account names, but not really anything personal or compromising, well and the pictures.

Fast forward to today: They told me that I need to pay them a « fee » and I was like huh? What fee? We never talked about anything like that and they never mentioned anything about money. I said that I could not afford it and blocked them because I was scared. They messaged me back on DA what the fuck I am doing and if I do not unblock and reply immediately, they will be pushed to share my pics on social media. I responded that they scared me and that they initially said, they have no ill intentions. Since I did not want to unblock them on my main account, I added them on a second account and they offered to solve things « peacefully ». Which I was thankful for and after some more chatting to diffuse the situation, they said that we should just end the relationship. This was great news to me, but then they sent another message, still insisting on me paying them. They wanted me to pay via Paypal friends and family and even provided an email address.

At this point I was so scared that I called the police. They told me to come over to the nearest station, it was almost midnight at this point, so I took the next bus. I had to wait for like 50 minutes until someone came. I felt so sick at this point and my stomach started to hurt like crazy, almost wanted to vomit. Then an officer came and took me into their office, where I told them everything and provided screenshots. The police was even kind enough to drive me home.

One I was home, the blackmailer was still blocked on main account and I also reported them on both apps. They messaged me on the second account that they thought, I fell asleep, so I have time until tomorrow to pay. Did not block them there yet because I am kind of curious to see what they will say. But ultimately, I didn’t pay anything and they also didn’t get any important data like my address or my real name. I am still awake and shaking a bit, laying in bed typing this… quite a scary experience.