Femdom: Is this a scam?

Femdom scams are common. Soooo common. The truth is that if you’re asking ‘is this a femdom scam?’, it’s probably a femdom scam :/.

I’ve written about femdom scams a few times over the years:

*Note: My older posts have not kept up with the fast pace of technology: As mentioned below, a simple, very useful check used to be to do a reverse image search on their (usually stolen) pictures and I pushed this pretty hard. It’s absolutely still worth doing, but it now only works for the lazy or the not-very-clever scammer: With deep fakes and morphing apps, anyone can create a convincing sexy image of a woman who doesn’t actually exist so nothing will turn up in these searches.

Many scammers have evolved far beyond these ham-fisted attempts we saw a few years back that were all:
‘I’m a very powerful sexy mistress who loves doing [all the common kinks] to my loyal slave. I will control you completely. Message me little slave and I will be the judge if you are worthy my time’*
*actual text from scammers
This blunt approach is usually from accounts with stolen pictures that you’d find all over the internet if you did a reverse image search. They’re ‘old style’ scammers, using sledge hammers to smash their marks over the head. They still exist, because of course they do, and they still work to some extent, but there are also many with much more insidious nuance now.

Sophisticated scammers look for the new, the naïve, the hopeful, the trusting, the lonely, the ones who haven’t the experience or community contacts to know what’s ‘normal’ in the BDSM world, and they offer relationships rather than just kinky play. A big difference now is that they play more to the emotions, all manipulative and relentless. It’s no longer just about ‘make his dick hard, ask for money’.

They’re very much like vanilla romance scams which are frighteningly successful.

In 2018, confidence/romance fraud was the seventh most commonly reported scam to the IC3 based on the number of complaints received, and the second costliest scam in terms of victim loss.
—FBI PSA

So when some super-keen, lovely-seeming Domme who’s been having actual for-real conversations about life and love and being together forever because you’re so special says ‘THIS is how it works, THIS is normal, don’t you love me?’, their marks don’t know any better. When a scammer spends ages investing in this approach (and they will, for a big score), their marks don’t know any better.

Let me make a really broad statement here:

‘Dominant women’* on the internet who dangle a relationship in front of you and then ask for money are scammers.

*not dominant or women, probably

Contrary to what some people believe, many of these scammers are very good at emotional manipulation, can be very convincing, and for a big score they will put in the time with a lot of pretty words full of love and relationship talk spiced up with femdom-related goodness. The fact that they are less ‘sex scammers’ and more ‘romance scammers with some femdom thrown in’ is a double whammy for the naive-hopeful.

The requests for money will often start small and escalate when they have you on the hook.

So how do you spot them? Honestly if they’re good, it can be quite difficult but some things to look out for:

• They contacted you for no reason (i.e. you are new, you have an empty profile, you’ve never interacted with anyone, and yet, there they are in your inbox declaring their interest just because)
• They don’t behave like any actual woman you’ve ever met (see point above). BDSMers aren’t some different species who behave in inexplicable ways, so if they’re all over you very quickly in a way you’ve never experienced before, well, yeah
• They’re very attractive with really good pictures (many are going less for porn-Domme and more for smiley-girl-next-door now)
• They will threaten to end it if you ask too many suspicious questions or ask for any proof of their identity or proof that their photos are them (‘if you don’t you trust me, I may as well go!’)
• They want to take their conversation with you off the site they found you on very early on for no reason
• They have odd grammar or usage in their language use even if they claim to be native English-speakers (a common one is using ‘relation’ instead of ‘relationship’)
• Some say they are from your city, but away at the moment (coming home soon!) but they will never engage in any conversations about the area that might give away that they have never lived there (they won’t know local’s names for places or ‘that pizza place that everyone knows’ etc)
• If they send you personal information, none of it is verifiable and they have no established social media presence that verifies them either
• They escalate the relationship very quickly, even love bombing to keep you on the hook, but any planned visits will be delayed because reasons (see next set of bullet points :/)

Common reasons a scammer will give for wanting money:

• As a gift, of course you must
• To prove sincerity/’true’ subness/that you’re not wasting her time
• All submissives give tributes, that’s how it works with true subs
• To show appreciation for her time, as all real subs do
• To sort out some sudden situation that’s happened that will stop her from coming to see you
• Plane ticket or other expenses to make a visit happen
• Some emergency (personal/family/heartstrings type)
• For your BDSM training (now we’re into ‘classic femdom scams’ territory)
• To buy toys for said training through THEIR supplier
• Book a hotel room (there’s a BDSM-themed hotel website that looks totally legit, it’s not)
• Write up a contract for your D/s
• etc.

At signs of resistance or suspicion, they may threaten to drop you like a hot rock or actually disappear for a while so that when they come back you won’t ask again. This along with telling you some version of ‘you’re not a true sub’/’I thought you were different from the others’/’I thought we had something real’/’you’ll never find anyone if you behave like this’/’this is how all of these relationships work’/’nobody will want you’/’you’re a fake/flake/liar/loser’ route. If they’ve been talking to you for a while they will know very well how to tap into your inherent fears.

So yeah. Not just ‘a scam’, but a really hurtful and cruel one that can cause real harm.

TL;DR:

Don’t give anyone on the internet any money as the cost of entry to a relationship.

Note: I know there are some lifestylers who ask for tribute for their own reasons, but I’m not making exceptions in my strident stance about this because newbies do not have the experience to tell, and the chance that the person asking them for money is NOT a scammer is infinitesimal, so yeah, just don’t.

Edited to add: This series of posts explaining in detail how a (vanilla) romance scammer worked is useful: There was a real person on the other end running the scam, and that person was allegedly recruited by a group for whom this is a business. Even when the victim saw it for what it was, the person on the other end played the ‘yes, it WAS a scam, but I fell in love with you for real!’ line. That is, in many cases, the ‘second wave’ of the scam.