Sugar Baby Scammer Makes Millions, Loses Everything
How Mai Watanabe built an empire of fraud, got arrested, and the host club addiction that lead her to do it
“Sugar Baby Riri” is making headlines across Japan.
The 25-year-old tricked men into giving her at least $1 million. Not only that, she also created and sold a manual on how to gain vulnerable men’s trust, and then how to exploit that to get rich.
Mai Watanabe, her real name, was charged with fraud on November 10th. This is just one case where she admitted to taking around $700,000 from several men for the past 2 years. She also made an additional $130,000 from the manual sales. So that’s $2 million total, that we know of.
The strange thing is, when police arrested her back in August, she wasn’t living it up in some penthouse swimming in a champagne pool. She was staying at a capsule hotel, with a broken phone and less than $100 on her.
How is it possible that someone could be making such bank, and be living like an unemployed college student?
That’s because Mai was giving every single yen she earned to a host named Hiroshi Tanaka. Hiroshi and his boss have also since been arrested, since they knew where Mai’s money was coming from.
Here’s how Mai made her millions, got arrested, and why she gave all her cash away to some guy.
Her scammer system
How did Mai do it? We don't need to do any extensive research, as she tells us here in this video, it’s in Japanese so I’ll break down her system below:
This video is 2 years old! Meaning, that she’s been boasting about her fraud, even admitting it was fraud, on YouTube and Twitter for years without repercussion.
Here’s a breakdown of how to get money from older, lonely guys (please don’t do this, it’s for educational purposes only here people):
Choose your target: meet your guy through a dating app or kyabakura club, etc. Make sure he’s got money to spend, but also doesn’t have any confidence, or hobbies, or any life outside of his miserable work existence.
Build trust: learn everything about him, when he wakes up, his favorite food, etc. Text him all the time and make him feel special.
Present your problem: never ask him for money! Instead, at some point ignore him for 2-3 days, making him worried about what happened to you. Then say “we need to talk”. Explain to him that your landlord is evicting you, or you owe money to the Yakuza, or you have to appear in adult videos to pay off a debt.
Reject his offers at first: counter any suggestions to get money from parents or to go to the police. He will then offer you money, but reject it the first time.
Take his money: if he trusts you, he will offer you money to help you a second time. Accept it and party.
Aftercare: the most important step. Make sure he feels like a hero for rescuing you so he’s not left with a sour taste in his mouth.
Cut ties or repeat: if he has no more money to give, slowly fade out of his life and block him. Or, go back to step 2 and get more money.
And there you go, you’re rich now. Mai’s advice spread like wildfire. She made a manual detailing this process and sold it for around $300 a copy.
Last year June one of her disciples, a 19-year-old woman, bought Mai’s book and got $72,000 from 2 different guys. She skipped step 6 on aftercare, instead bluntly saying she was kidnapped and blocking them immediately after. The guys, obviously pissed, went to the police and the whole thing began to unravel from there.
The charges that Mai faces are not that she got money from the men. That’s not illegal. She is in trouble because of fraud, that is, lying to the men to get that money. She also might be in trouble for failing to pay any taxes on her “earnings.”
The victim becomes the bad guy
So why did Mai resort to this? And more interestingly, why did she fail to save any of the money that she received?
Apparently, when she was 19, she was just an average university student. But she started going to host clubs. In order to keep up with her nightly addiction, she turned to night work herself. I don’t think any information out there is clear on exactly what that means, could range from prostitution to hostess work.
But that wasn’t enough. I wrote about this in a separate article, on how women can be lured into becoming regular customers to these places and, in some instances, have to sell their bodies to pay off their debts.
No one knows Mai’s exact situation, but whatever it is, she fell in love with one of the hosts. That host, Hiroshi, also has his own YouTube channel, where he openly admits to knowing where Mai’s money was coming from and also how he was manipulating her.
He bought a fish-shaped kettle to serve her alcohol in, and charged her $65,000 for the service! Mai would sometimes spend $40,0000 a night at this place, earning her the name “Mother Theresa” at the club.
At the end of the day, Mai was being emotionally controlled by Hiroshi. But, she also voluntarily went to his club in the beginning. To keep up this lifestyle of feeling like she was loved by someone, she turned to the same exact methods of cruel exploitation that were being used on her. In the end, she lost everything.
If you’re interested in going further into this, here’s an excellent English rundown of all the facts:
LOL. I've been following this. I feel for these poor guys.