First she was 18 then suddenly I was being threatened

Sextortion · Plenty of Fish · United States

I was 22 and thought I was talking to an 18 year old girl from Grand Rapids on Plenty of Fish. Nothing wild just dumb flirting late at night the kind of thing lonely people do when they are not thinking hard enough.

Then two days in the whole thing flipped.

Suddenly she says she is actually 15. Right after that I start getting threats from people claiming to be her grandparents. They said they were going to call police call my family ruin my life tell everyone I was a predator unless I sent money. They even pushed the shame hard like they already knew panic would do most of the work for them.

That was the part that really got me. Even when something feels wrong panic gets there first. Your chest gets tight and all you want is for the noise to stop. Later I found a case that sounded horribly close to what happened to me:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmi/pr/2025_0617_Boyd_Sentencing_PR