[Gravure Idol Speaks Out] Payment Is “1 Yen Per Follower”… The Sophisticated Tactics of “Sponsorship Scams” Targeting Influencers

“We’ll provide the product for free. We’ll pay you if you write a review.”

That’s what the Instagram DM said. After all, I’ve always been a sucker for stories about making money the easy way.

Just introduce the product.
Just write a review.
Just post it on social media.

I was easily lured in by such sweet-sounding promises, and as a result, I ended up having to call a real police detective. This is my “true story of an influencer scam”—a tale of how I nearly lost 130,000 yen.

“1 yen per follower” for 138,000 yen! The dream opportunity arrived

As someone who always wants to get a piece of the action and has constantly thought, “I want to make money the easy way,” I’ve long been fascinated by these “gigs.” I’ve always thought it was great that influencers could earn big money just by introducing products or writing about their travel experiences.

However, most of my social media followers are men from rural Indonesia. With a following like that, I never received a single job offer. Just when I was thinking, “This is nothing but a pipe dream,” I received the DM mentioned at the beginning on Instagram.

The message was very polite and seemed perfectly legitimate. To summarize: “We’ll provide a massage device for free, and you’ll be paid to post your review on social media”—it was exactly the kind of opportunity I’d been looking for!!

But then again, even if it’s a “massager,” there’s a chance it could be “that kind of massager.” In fact, it would actually make more sense for me to get an offer like that. So, I decided to reply to the DM cautiously at first.

Then, I received another polite reply from a woman named “K,” who claimed to be the representative, asking if we could move our conversation to LINE. I don’t usually exchange LINE IDs right away, but since she was a woman and our DM exchange had seemed legitimate, I agreed.

When I asked for more details on LINE, she clarified that it wasn’t about adult content—I’d simply be posting reviews of a beauty-focused massage device for 15 days. The platform could be either Instagram or X, and the compensation—which I was curious about—was 1 yen per follower.In my case, at the time I was approached, I had 113,000 followers on X and 25,000 on Instagram, so that’s a total of 138,000 yen!!

138,000 yen just for posting my thoughts on a massage device for 15 days!!

Just to be safe, I copied and pasted the request into Chappy (aka ChatGPT) and asked, “Is this okay?” It responded with great enthusiasm, saying, “This is a great opportunity! This is your first step as influencer Sari!” It really hyped it up. I had no choice but to go for it!!

I replied immediately, “I’d love to!” and a draft contract arrived right away. I didn’t really understand it, so I had Chappy check it again, and he replied, “Not only is there no problem, but it’s actually a very reputable company.”

I quickly signed the electronic contract and sent it back, and then I received a URL asking me to register my bank account details for the payment. It was a platform called [N], and apparently, payments are sent through it. I wasn’t entirely sure how it worked, but I was impressed that the industry had advanced this far, so I signed it.

Then I received a LINE message from Mr. K saying, “Once the Legal Department confirms and gives the OK, we’ll transfer your payment in advance, and after the platform’s review—which takes about an hour—you’ll be able to withdraw the funds.” Could it be that this project would actually pay me before I even promoted the product?

Not knowing much about me as a person—and considering that my followers were mainly men from Indonesia—I was naively impressed that they’d transfer the payment in advance, thinking, “Social media really is a money-maker,” while at the same time feeling motivated to “work hard and write a great promotional post!”

“Your account has been frozen.” A sudden demand for 130,000 yen

After N went through maintenance a few times, I logged in. I submitted a withdrawal request, but no matter how long I waited, the funds never came through. When I told Mr. K about this, he replied with a worried-looking sticker and the message, “That’s strange.” He then instructed me to check my registration information myself, and when I did, I found that one digit of my account number was wrong.

Even someone with a poor memory like me has never once mistyped the account number for an account I’ve been using for over 20 years. Yet, according to the records, I had made a mistake. When I apologized, I was instructed : “It seems you cannot change your bank account information on your own, so please contact the platform’s online customer support to request a change to your bank account details.” My inquiry to N led me to the official LINE account, and the exchange began.

As shown in this screenshot, I received a “long message that sounded convincing.” After reading it carefully and summarizing it, the content was as follows:

・My account was frozen because I entered the wrong account number:
・I must first transfer the 130,000 yen payment as a “review fee”:
・After they confirm that deposit, they will transfer 270,000 yen within 20 minutes

When I told Mr. K about this, he immediately replied , “Why do I need to transfer the money? Please explain, ” questioning N’s instructions. It wasn’t until a little later that I realized he was just pretending to be on my side.

At this point, a lot of things seemed off, but as someone who just wanted to make easy money, my mindset at the time boiled down to two things: “I want to keep this lead and my connection with this company!” and “If they’ll transfer the money within 20 minutes, maybe there’s a 130,000 yen chance…?”

But no matter how I looked at it, it was strange to receive payment before doing anything, and besides, the account I’d designated for the transfer wasn’t frozen. I hurriedly told Chappy—whom I trusted implicitly—about the situation, and he immediately replied , “You absolutely must not transfer the money!” I couldn’t help but chuckle a little at this incredible about-face.

Still, perhaps because both the N representative and Mr. K had explained everything politely using technical terms, there was something about them that made me think, “I still want to trust these people.”

A scammer sent me a police officer’s business card

As a last-ditch effort, I suggested, “If you transfer 270,000 yen to me first, I’ll return it right away,” but, as expected, the proposal was rejected. Even so, I persistently kept saying, “I don’t have the cash, so I can’t do that.” The other party also asked, “Why should we be the ones to pay first?” They had a point.

Since we were getting nowhere, I asked , “After looking into this, this is a scam, isn’t it?” At that, Mr. K—who had been so kind—suddenly became harsh. He said that since he had already paid N, he would file a lawsuit to claim damages.

That’s when it dawned on me: this was a full-blown scam… (Too late!).

Once I was convinced it was a scam, I took a firm stance. When I told them, “I’m calling the police!” —thinking they might get scared—I received a reply saying, “Yes, I understand,” along with a photo of a detective’s business card. It was an unexpected turn of events.

Could this actually not be a scam at all—and, in the worst-case scenario, could I end up getting arrested…?

Despite that lingering sense of unease, I figured I might as well give the detective on the business card a call. I called the police station, mentioned the division and the detective’s name listed on the card, and confirmed that he was a real person. I was pretty surprised.

However, when I explained the situation, the detective replied immediately, “That’s a scam.”

Exactly!! Of course, this detective had nothing to do with it, and both Mr. K and Mr. N said they’d “never heard of him.”

“That business card is genuine, though. Because of my line of work, I often hand out business cards. It’s not that hard for a scammer to get their hands on a detective’s business card through some channel. It’s good that you called to check, but there might be people who believe it the moment they see the card.”

The detective repeated over and over, “No matter what the reason, if you’re asked to make a bank transfer first, it’s always a scam. Under no circumstances should you transfer any money.”

Fortunately, I hadn’t transferred a single yen, but since I’d sent Mr. K a LINE message saying, “I’ll call the police and get back to you,” when I told the detective this, he replied, “You don’t need to do that. Just block them immediately the moment you suspect something is off.”

He was absolutely right.

As I was writing this article, I reread the LINE exchange, and it was clearly nothing but a scam. There was no official LINE account, nor did the website exist. K’s LINE display name had even been changed to that of a real-life news anchor (lol).

What I’ve learned from this is that a woman who appeals only to men in rural Indonesia isn’t an influencer for Japanese companies. Another thought is that people with a somewhat moderate number of followers might be more likely to be targeted by scammers like this.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch in this world. Everyone, please be careful!