She sat in the dark studio, the glow of the monitor illuminating a TikTok profile. A gold prom dress. A seller named “Promise.” And a transaction that turned into a nightmare.

“So, a little bit of some backstory,” the host said, his voice steady. “I was looking for prom dresses due to me deciding that I wanted to go to prom a little bit later due to financial stresses and also just me not knowing if I really wanted to go to my senior prom. I ended up deciding I wanted to go to my senior prom.”

He leaned forward.

“So, I decided to look on TikTok for some dresses for sale from other girls who have recently been to prom or girls from last year who went to prom. I was just looking for a cute dress to wear.”

He pulled up the first hinge.

“She was a CNA, working long shifts to afford a dress for one night. She had $700 saved. She thought she found the perfect one on TikTok. She didn’t know she was about to learn a lesson that would cost her every penny and her peace of mind.”

The host nodded.

“That’s a good idea actually. You know what I’m saying? Because most people only gonna wear that dress one day. People still got it. Just sitting up. Hit somebody up. Ask them, ‘Hey, let me get it for the low.’”

He pulled up the TikTok search.

“Obviously, I ended up going on TikTok in the search bar and I searched up prom dresses for sale. And a dress came up from the user named Promise. Here’s the—what I ended up looking on their page. I saw the dress. I looked at the measurements. It was all the same measurements that I have. So, I was extremely excited because I was like, ‘Okay, like I just found my dress. Let me contact the seller.’”

He pulled up the messages.

“I ended up contacting the seller on April 23rd. Here’s the messages. It says, ‘Hey, would you be able to ship it to me?’ Basically saying like, ‘I’m interested in the dress. Do you guys ship?’ I was extremely excited about getting the dress. They ended up texting me two hours back with this message.”

He read the response.

“‘Sis, yes. What size is the bust?’”

“33.”

“‘Was it made custom?’”

“I guess.”

“Yes.”

He continued.

“Okay. So, I decided to sleep on the fact of getting this dress overnight. And then the next day, I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to buy this dress.’ Because I was kind of just rushing to get my things ready for prom. So, I was like, ‘Okay, I’m just going to buy the dress.’ Right? That’s where I went wrong. I ended up telling the person that I was interested in buying a dress. So, they sent me this number.”

He pulled up the host’s advice.

“All right. Let me just give y’all, you know what I’m saying? If you’re ever doing something like this, maybe y’all should do PayPal. Not Cash App. Definitely not Zelle. PayPal, all right. PayPal is kind of like going to ensure that you kind of get your money back. And then you got to PayPal it. Not friends and family. You got to pay it. PayPal it like you paying for some goods. You know what I’m saying? So usually, PayPal is really good for giving people their money back if they’ve been scammed. But so next time—but she didn’t, you know, y’all didn’t do this—but just for the future. You know what I’m saying? PayPal.”

He pulled up the text exchange.

“Here’s a text I received from this number.”

He read the message.

“‘I don’t know who you are.’ They said, ‘Damn, right.’”

He paused.

“The person was basically saying that they didn’t know who I was, which I was very, very confused about because I was like, ‘I was just texting you on TikTok, so how do you not know who I am?’ Right? But anyways, I end up texting the person back on TikTok. I’m like, ‘I just texted you an iMessage. How do you not know who I am?’ They basically said that this was their sister’s number. This was their sister’s, and that’s basically how they will be getting the payment for the dress. So, I was like, ‘Okay, no problem. Give me your number so I can text you so we can—you know—I can get in contact about the shipping about everything with my dress.’”

He pulled up the payment.

“So after that, the person basically texted me on iMessage saying like, ‘Okay, what is your shipping information after I sent the money?’ Here’s the amount of money I sent in the confirmation. I can’t see that. They can say 200.”

He paused.

“Mind you, this is after I sent the money. They asked me for my shipping details. I told them my shipping details. They asked me for my shipping name. I told them my shipping name. Everything was good and I got my dress.”

He paused again.

“Basically, I was super excited about getting my dress, right? So, basically around April 24th, this all happened on April 24th, by the way. But on April 24th, around 11:30, 12:00 at night, I was scrolling through TikTok when I came across this. It was basically a TikTok of somebody else explaining that this seller hasn’t sent out their dress and that they’re a fraud. And I obviously got very, very, very scared due to the fact that I just paid $700 for this.”

The host’s eyes widened.

“Oh, it said 700, not 200.”

“Yes. From this seller.”

“So I end up texting the seller basically saying, ‘Send me my money back.’ Like I was on hot. Okay. I was I was hot because you just scammed me $700.”

He shook his head.

“Damn.”

He pulled up the second hinge.

“She worked all week as a CNA. She saved every dollar. Her parents weren’t involved. This was her money, her effort, her prom. And in one转账, it was gone. Not because she was stupid. Because she trusted someone. And that someone was a predator in a prom dress.”

The host nodded.

“Yo, I heard they getting people like that on TikTok, though. Like girls are like saying that they do hair. They telling you to send a deposit. It might be $25, $25 deposit. And then but there’s not really an address to, you know what I mean? So they just got free little 25. It’s a lot of that going on.”

“700 is crazy.”

“It’s not even like that’s not chump change. Like that’s $700.”

“700.”

“All this money was coming from my bank account. My parents were not involved at all. I work as a young CNA. I make money. And I decided I was going to work all week long just to afford—”

He pulled up the sister’s boyfriend.

“But let’s just then I also texted the number that was the sister’s Zelle, which here’s the name of the sister. I just want y’all to know because we’re going to get these people out of here. The number ended up texting me around 12:30 at night, but it wasn’t the same number as the sister’s, though. Apparently, this was the sister’s boyfriend who texted me basically being on hot saying like, ‘Y’all— are not going to get anything. Stop asking me and my girl for money, yada yada yada.’”

He pulled up the response.

“Texting back on hot because y’all just scammed me and y’all want to be mad rude. Like anyways, I end up seeing this message around 4:30, 5:00 in the morning. I called the number and I’m basically said, ‘Why would y’all scam me? That’s dead wrong.’ yada yada yada. They end up, it was a male, by the way, screaming at me, calling on the phone saying, ‘You’re dumb as f—. I’m not giving you anything.’ yada yada.”

He pulled up the desperate offer.

“So, I keep texting the number and they keep texting me back. I basically said to them, ‘If you guys give me my money back, I will let y’all keep 200 because I know y’all need it more than me.’”

He laughed dryly.

“Y’all need more than me.”

He read the next message.

“I’ll let y’all keep 200. Just send me five hundred. I’m getting tired of reporting myself. Like, did y’all even graduate?”

He paused.

“Obviously, ’cause y’all had to scam me.”

He pulled up the third hinge.

“She offered to let them keep $200. She was willing to lose almost a third of her money just to get the rest back. That’s not desperation. That’s defeat. And the scammers knew it. They smelled her fear like blood in the water. And they laughed at her. Then they kept her money.”

He pulled up the voice memo transcript.

“So, here’s the messages. Um, they were basically going back and forth with me on voice memos saying that they were not going to give me my money back.”

He read the transcript.

“‘Are you f—ing reading? Like, are you not understanding what the f— I’m saying? I just told you my folk asked me for a Zelle. I gave them the Zelle, right? You think I’m going to hold on to $700 for it? Are you f—ing—soon as she got the Zelle, she sent the $650 to twin. It’s no money. She ain’t had the money for a minute or two. Are you f—ing—’”

He paused.

“I said, ‘Okay, I will see y’all in court and I will be disputing the charges.’ So, I guess me saying I was going to dispute the charges kind of put some fear in their heart because they ended up texting me basically saying, ‘I will give you your money back.’”

He pulled up the host’s advice on payment methods.

“I don’t think you can put no dispute when it’s Zelle, right? ‘Cause I know in Zelle you can send money a couple of ways though. So I’m not sure if she sent it like through friends and family or was it sent—’cause I know you can send Zelle. I think I don’t know, but usually they say that sh— is final. I thought—”

He nodded.

“I was like, ‘Okay, I need my money back.’ They told me, ‘Oh, I do not have Zelle. I’m going to send you the money back on Apple Pay.’ I currently do not have Apple Pay. Apple Pay is stupid. They restricted me when I was younger. That’s besides the point. I do not have Apple Pay. So, I told them to send the money to this number, to my mother’s number, which they were like, ‘Okay, fine.’”

He pulled up the final exchange.

“They ended up texting me back 20 minutes later, basically explaining that, ‘Oh, the person who sold you the dress wants 200. You’re going to have to give me 75.’ What am I giving you $75 for? So, I’m all—I’m kind of just like, ‘Let me see what I can get back because I obviously knew like these are scammers. They will not give me my money back.’ So, I’m like, ‘Okay.’ They end up stopped texting me after that and I just was very, very upset ’cause I realized I couldn’t get my money back.”

He pulled up the fourth hinge.

“She called them. She texted them. She begged them. She offered to let them keep $200. She threatened court. She tried everything. And in the end, she got nothing. Not the dress. Not the money. Not even the satisfaction of a response. Just a lesson. And $700 worth of trust burned to ash.”

He pulled up the moral of the story.

“So basically the end of the story or the moral of the story is to please do not send money to something that you haven’t seen in person. And please do not be vulnerable to these prom scam artists. They feed off vulnerability, especially to young girls who are rushing to find prom dresses, prom shoes, prom hair, prom nails, prom anything because it’s such a big market right now. So, just make sure that you’re doing your research on prom dresses and only buy from trusted websites or trusted sellers. And please also do not Zelle people because the bank will not give you your money back.”

He nodded.

“That’s all I’m going to say for today. Please repost this, like it, comment, do anything you can do to share this so we can get these people down. Please report that account so they do not scam anybody else ’cause I see in their account they’re still saying the gold dress and the silver dress is for sale. Please do not send these people money. All right.”

He pulled up his own scam story.

“Um yeah, we definitely going to try to get the word out. Um, Cash App, you ain’t getting no money back. You try to reach out to Cash App. This one time, somebody hacked my homeboy’s Facebook account up and he was like, ‘Man, I need $100. My son needs some Pampers or whatever the case is.’ I sent the $100. Next thing I know, it probably was like the next day or it probably was later on that day. Um, I see a friend request from my homie from a different page. So, I’m like, ‘What the hell is this?’ Um, course added it and soon as I look on his page, the first thing it says, ‘Hey guys, sorry my Facebook was hacked.’ You know what I’m saying? ‘I’m sorry for anybody who lost money.’ This, that, and the third. So, I’m just like, damn. So, I hit up Cash App. I was like, ‘Hey, you know, this was a scam.’ Cash App said, ‘F— me,’ basically. And then uh it was another incident. Cash App said, ‘F— me.’ And then of course Zelle, I just knew that automatically like, ‘You ain’t getting that back.’ They shoot right before you send it, they be like, ‘Make sure now.’ You know what I’m saying? So you ain’t getting that back.”

He pulled up the hotel deposit story.

“And then so the only thing that I know like for sure, for sure, you getting your money back is if you do like a payment like you slide your credit card, you know what I’m saying? You can do a charge back. Or uh I just had to do that with a f—ing hotel. Like I don’t even know what happened with that f—ing case. Y’all know how the hotel be like $100 deposit for the—you know, just in case you f— something up. They never keep—they don’t ever give me my f—ing $100 back. So what the f—? Anyway, so I had to call the bank. So I called them first. They was acting like it automatically releases, and then I had to call the uh bank.”

He pulled up the final hinge.

“Cash App won’t protect you. Zelle won’t protect you. Even your bank might fight you. But PayPal? PayPal will go to war for you. It’s not perfect. It’s not fast. But it’s something. And in a world where scammers are getting smarter every day, ‘something’ is the difference between getting your money back and watching it disappear forever.”

He nodded.

“But anyway, uh, PayPal, y’all, you know what I’m saying? If y’all can, if y’all was to buy some goods from somebody, just a regular person type sh—, just use PayPal. You know what I’m saying? It’s better than just sending just fuel money like that. You know what I’m saying? That way, ’cause PayPal kind of guarantees your money back. They for the customer every time. So, might take a little minute for you to get it, but you’ll get it for sure. You know what I’m saying? So, hopefully don’t nobody else get got. Like I say, it’s a lot of this going around. So, I’m sorry this happened to her and, you know, um, just a learning experience. You know what I’m saying? Um, but we all got to learn and, um, we all going to bounce back.”

He reached for his water.

“All right. I appreciate y’all. I love y’all. Make sure y’all like the video. Make sure y’all subscribe to both Storytime channels. We Still Hustle Daily and Still Hustle Daily.”

He set the glass down.

“And again, tap in. Link in the description below if y’all are interested in learning how to drop ship. All right, for eBay drop shipping. You know what I mean? I’m making passive income, thousands of dollars every single month by eBay drop shipping. All right, so tap in. I could put y’all on just for $47. $47 for me to put y’all on. $47 to start your store. You can get rolling. All right. So, tap in with me if y’all interested. Link in the description below. Peace.”