I stayed so the truth could be seen.
After realizing I’d been scammed, I didn’t leave immediately.
That decision wasn’t born out of attachment—it came from what seemed, at the time, the most rational reason:
I wanted to stay, to give law enforcement a chance to track the other party’s behavior and trail.
So I stayed, wide awake.
That period lasted 39 days in total.
Throughout those 39 days, I didn’t invest another cent.
I did only one thing: stall for time.
At first, it wasn’t a carefully planned countermove.
I simply hoped that by keeping the conversation going,
I could leave enough behavioral traces for the other side
so that the FBI or relevant authorities might trace the entire chain.
But it was during this time
that I stumbled upon the truth.
I began to realize—
the situation looked nothing like the “single scammer” I had imagined.
First came the “second person.”
He denied everything the first character had said,
dismissed the backstories crafted to win my empathy,
as if the earlier person had never existed.
It was then that I understood:
the depth of emotion, the narratives of trauma—
they weren’t anyone’s lived experience.
They were scripted modules, replaceable at will,
designed by a system to build trust.
Then came the escalation of emotion.
When I started delaying replies or leaving messages on read,
the other party erupted in rage,
accusing me of “treating his words like trash,”
condemning my “read-but-no-reply” as disrespectful.
This wasn’t just an emotional outburst—
it was pressure testing, again and again:
testing whether control still held,
testing whether I could still be pushed forward.
Financially, I also chose to stall.
When the scammer pressured me to borrow the money
I made it up and told him that an elderly couple at a church would lend me money,
but the funds were in a mutual fund,
and withdrawal would take time due to slower procedures.
This wasn’t an improvisation—
it was an instinctive defense:
I used the system’s own rhythm
to buy myself time.
He rushed, I slowed.
He pressed, I dragged.
In this back-and-forth,
I gradually saw one thing clearly:
What I was facing was no longer a person,
but a system—one that could constantly reorganize, divide labor, and operate in relays.
And when I finally realized this,
I also faced another harsh reality:
Cracking this system was incredibly difficult.
It didn’t rely on a single individual.
It didn’t need you to believe completely—
it only needed you not to leave.
What it consumed wasn’t just money,
but time, attention, emotion, and self-blame.
And precisely because I stayed awake during those 39 days,
I could leave behind for future readers
this structural record—not speculation, but an eyewitness account.
Not to relive the pain,
but to help more people understand one thing:
When you think you’re dealing with a person,
you’re actually inside a highly engineered system.
And leaving
is not giving up,
not failure—
it is
the first act that renders this system useless.
Chinese version:
https://classic-blog.udn.com/singi28831/185678353
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