I was blackmailed by a freelance writer found via social media

It all started when I met with a writer via social media to do an essay. He started off as a nice person, and even did 4 essays for me. Then things changed. For the 5th time, he ended up not doing an essay for me that didn't require as much. When I kept asking for my money back (which was $30), he kept on making excuses as to why he wouldn't give it back.

He later emailed me about an investigative journalist who kept on bribing him with money to turn in essays he wrote so he can catch students cheating. He said that I would have to pay him more money to keep quiet. When I asked for evidence regarding this, he started becoming hostile towards me and threatened to tattle on me. He even said other students paid him money as well so he would keep quiet. I only paid out of fear because I didn't want my school to find out. He also blocked me on social media so I don't contact him. I blocked him back on everything as well, so he doesn't harass me. Needless to say, I don't think I will be getting my money back.

I feel so stupid because he has all our conversations on Gmail, transactions on Hulu, etc with my real name. It's my own naivety & cluelessness that got me in this predicament. Why couldn't I have done some research on better writers? Why couldn't I have made a separate paypal to pay him? Why did I use my email that contained my name? Why did I even tell him the school I went to??

I feel like a fool and I just want to die because I don't want my school to find out about this.

Here are my assumptions:

1. The scammer purporting to be an 'essay writer' has been found via Twitter.

2. His username is listed as fraud on this page: https://essayscam.org/forum/es/list-spamming-scamming-foreign-twitter-freelance-6050/

Am I correct? :(

Another assumption - he is truly located in Kenya (not that all Kenyan writers are frauds, but they are active on social media pretending to be US/UK writers). Or perhaps in Ukraine, even though legitimate Ukrainian freelance writers typically have more integrity.

This is one of the pitfalls when trying to work directly with a 'freelance writer': you don't really know who he/she is (unless you work with a very reputable freelance writer who's been known to the academic research community for years). When working with a reputable essay writing company, they are in control and won't allow to let it happen.

I've seen students cheering up when a scam writer contacted them about their homework assignment and offered great rates; in the end, they may save some money to receive a semi-plagiarized paper, but their risk being harassed or blackmailed.

At this point, I'd avoid replying to any suspicious emails from 'investigators' or 'professors' because those are, most likely, going to be fake. Some of these scammers may use free email accounts associated with keywords like: lawyer, academia, etc. to try to fool the recipient into thinking the message is authentic, so be careful.

Unfortunately, yes. I can even private message you the user.


Not. He's in the US.


Thanks for the helpful advice. At this point, all I care about is if my school finds out. I don't even want my money back anymore. I'm pretty sure the investigation is a sham because he caught an attitude when I tried to ask for proof. I'm still worried about getting snitched on. I don't even blame myself or the other students for paying to avoid getting tattled on.

Still, I don't believe so. If you think he's in the US only because his Paypal address was associated with a fake postal address or he uses his partner-in-crime's address, that's not always the case. I do hope he leaves you alone by 'servicing' other, unsuspecting students (pun intended ;).

Yeah. I guess your right, because even the name he provided in his Paypal looks foreign.


He's blocked on everything, so he can't bug me. I'll pray to my God that those unfortunate students don't go through the same sht I did.

Probably, you've come here 'after' all of this has happened to you, i.e., your Google search directed you here after you got caught in this mess.

Yes, it's a sad thing to find out a student falling into the trap by these scammers. Had you done some homework beforehand (which is now a mandatory part of information literacy), you would have saved yourself a lot of hassle and stress. For instance, quite a few threads on this forum are about the precautions one must take while placing an order with a writer/company plus other things.

That said, though it's obvious that the details of your ID and whereabouts is some sensitive data that the writer has, I think the scammer won't do anything because he's a fraudster himself. So, probably you just want to relax. He's reaped the benefit already out of you. Just don't let this happen again I would say.

If you look around here, you will find stories of scam that are far more inhumane and painful. I think you got away good.

It is often said that "hindsight is 20/20". The only take away from this experience for you is that you will now be more cautious about hiring independent writer services without first vetting the writer. The independent writers at this forum have a track record of reliability and being discreet. You won't ever have to worry about being blackmailed by a writer from this forum because they value their name and reputation more than the money they can get from harassing you. Remember, the writers get clients through referrals as well. If I were you, I would make sure that the students in my immediate circle, as well as my closest friends, know about my experience and the name of the writer, as well as his contact details, just in case. You can also post his contact information in a single use blog or Twitter account if you want to make sure that information and warning reach a far larger number of unsuspecting students. Don't fall for his blackmail style. There is absolutely no way he can do you any academic harm. Only your professor can do that, if your essay, when run through a checker, comes back with a high degree of plagiarism in it. If you have submitted and been graded on the paper, then you can just laugh in the scam writer's face.

Fraudulent writers are emboldened by the way that students cave in to their threats. They use bullying, harassment, and threats in order to break the spirit of the student so that they can get what they want. The important thing to remember is this, there is no way a writer can blackmail a student unless he allows him to. Call his bluff. dare him to turn in your essay, threaten him back. See how quickly he folds and disappears. So he has a journalist paying him? Even better. Have him turn your papers in, the journalist, whom I know does not exist, will disappear as well. If you call their bluff on every angle, they will know that you are not playing games either. In fact, tell him, it's too late for him to threaten you because you have already been turned in by your teacher based upon your confession. I know, that's over reaching and exaggerating, but then, so are the threats of the scamming blackmailers. You need to be more devious and more cunning than they are to make them stop.

The concept of playing nice with others seems to be disappearing. I do not understand the purpose of threatening on either side. If a client orders a project and the writer accepts payment for the project, the writer should give 110% of his/her efforts to produce the best quality project as possible--and deliver it on time or early. If a client orders 3 pages and see he/she only needs 2, they should either receive a refund for the extra page or at the very least a credit for another project. The academic writing business should not be as cut-throat as it's become. Sure, we don't live in "It's a Wonderful Life" land, but dang, people. What happened to doing the right thing?

Always remember that anybody can say anything on the internet, and never need to prove it. So don't let any scam artist threaten you with a "journalist" and exposing you. A reputable journalist doesn't work in the manner indicated by the OP. In fact, a good journalist will be able to access information, without having to pay someone for the data. That's just a load of crap meant to intimidate students who mistakenly trusted the writer. There is no power in blackmail if the student doesn't give the scammer the power to blackmail them.

The only mystery is that the OP actually got 4 essays from the writer, first. This is exceptionally unusual, because scammers masquerading as writers don't usually provide satisfactory essays before perpetrating their scams; and legitimate writers who actually provide the work for which they're paid don't suddenly decide to scam people instead of producing essays. I'm guessing that the "writer" in question was actually one of those middlemen pretending to be a client to a legitimate writer and pretending to be a writer to a customer and ripping off both of them. Plenty of them have contacted me over the years pretending to be students and asking me to provide work first and take payment afterwards. There's always something obvious that exposes them, either in something they write (or copy/paste) in their emails or in the way that there's always a very suspicious delay before they can answer a basic question about the project (because they have to relay that question and the response to and from the actual client to answer my questions). In this case, the scammer probably ripped off a desperate writer for the first 4 projects and got as much work out of that writer as he could before the writer refused to provide any more work without payment, so the scammer just kept the money because he couldn't find another real writer to rip off to perpetuate the scam on the client.

It is possible that something happened along the way that forced an otherwise honest writer to turn rogue. Maybe he suddenly came into need for money and saw this as the most opportune way to get what he needed. Assuming that the writer is actually from Kenya, we cannot really assess his location due to various masking methods like VPN and stuff, we can say that he changed the game by actually getting the student to give him confidence first, then striking with the con. It would not be impossible for him to do that. Although these days, a writer who does such a thing would never work again. It is because of the bad actors in the field that students are becoming more and more comfortable with using an AI writer instead.

This is extremely unlikely, IMO. A normal person who is simply trying to earn a living by writing wouldn't suddenly resort to extorting and threatening a customer, just because he needed more money. Hundreds of millions of people need more money but never become criminals in their lines of work just because of their financial needs; the same goes for (real) writers who might fall on financial hard times.

Only a true sociopath would ever do anything like this, not someone who tried to earn an honest living as a writer, unsuccessfully. It's much more likely that this was a setup all along: he wrote a few simple essays specifically intending to use those essays as the basis for his blackmail/extortion scheme, which would only work if he knew that his customer submitted his essays for credit.