I emailed a lady whose ad I found online, asking if she was still in my area; she replied with in a few hours, listing her rates and asking for a 50% deposit for my desired session time. This was to be paid from a PayPal cash card and she said she would contact me shortly after she had verified the money to make meeting arraignments. But she didn’t answer the question I actually asked, whether she still in the area (I’ve noticed some ladies move around a lot). I used Tineye to look up her pics, but they don’t appear to be stolen. Does any of this sound like a scam to you?
In a word? Yeah. I know that pretty, new girls can be very tempting for guys, especially if they don’t charge much. But the fact of the matter is, most reputable, dependable escorts these days have an established online presence. They’ve got their own websites, ads and posts on local escort boards, Twitter accounts and other such signs that they’re real professionals rather than scammers, cops, thieves, amateurs or flakes; in short, they leave footprints online as any real, solid entity would. I mean, take me for an example; if you Google “Maggie McNeill” you’re going to find my blog, my Twitter, my escort site, YouTube videos, articles, interviews, my book, and even hit-pieces criticizing me…and that’s just on the first page. Click on “images” and you’ll see over 20 pictures of me (not all of ’em flattering…*sigh*) Go to my Twitter & you’ll find I’ve been there since December 2011, and that I have over 12,000 followers and over 132,000 tweets. This blog has existed since July 2010, and I have reviews on ECCIE going back to that same year. And while I’m an especially-prominent case, even less well-known ladies are going to have something; as a test I just Googled a half-dozen of my friends with the words “Seattle escort” after their names, and every one of them came up with plenty of results, more than enough to convince anyone that these are bona fide sex work professionals rather than who-knows-whats hiding behind fake pictures. It may be that the lady you contacted is both well-known and well-reviewed, and has a prominent online footprint, but beyond the Tineye search which turned up nothing (which itself seems weird; a Google reverse image search on a few of my pics turned up matches on my website, Twitter & some scraper sites) you don’t seem to have made any effort to check her out, so I can’t say. But I will say this: nobody who isn’t well-established can generally ask for deposits and expect to get them, so if your gal is as much of a ghost as she appears to be (and again, I only have your word to go on), she’s either incredibly overconfident or trolling for guys too horny to bother with due diligence.
(Have a question of your own? Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)
