The sugar lifestyle, where people, typically rich older men, will employ sugar babies for companionship and intimacy, isn’t inherently scammer-friendly, but more and more online scams these days appear to invoke sugaring in one way or another. A common scam involves men messaging women and offering to be their sugar daddies, which will inevitably involve them asking you to buy gift cards to “prove” your identity before they’ll send you any money, but one prominent sugar baby in Japan has turned the tables on these scammers.

@cinnagal Sources & Further reading: ‘Sugar Baby Riri’ gets nine year prison sentence over romance scam - The Japan Times Japanese ‘ baby’ sent to prison for swindling men out of $1 million and selling a guide on how to do it: ‘She took advantage of feelings for her’ - Fortune Japan’s Most Unhinged Scammer Loses it All - Japananalysis on YT #hostclub #japantiktok #japannews #scammer #kabukicho #渋谷 #truecrime #storytime #gyaru #frenchcurlbraids ♬ original sound - ジャックス (Jax!)

Mai Watanabe, who goes by “Sugar Baby Riri” online, is a 25-year-old woman who was recently sentenced to nine years in prison for scamming three men out of almost a million dollars through romance scams. In addition, she was also caught selling manuals in an attempt to teach others how to commit similarly fraudulent acts, which would definitely kill any chance you had at claiming you didn’t know that what you were doing was wrong.

Watanabe spent the money she scammed out of the men on a man who worked at a host club in Tokyo’s Kabukicho District, hoping to make him number one in terms of sales. The judge condemned Watanabe for her selfish motives, arguing that as a result there was no room for leniency and setting a $51,700 fine in addition to the prison sentence. Judge Yoichi Omura condemned Watanabe for taking advantage of her victims’ feelings for her as well. While entering her guilty plea, Watanabe said, “I thought it was fair game to commit fraud for the sake of the host,” while also showing remorse, telling the court that she “did something really bad.”

In a video about Watanabe, TikToker cinnagal explained Watanabe’s process: She would seek out incredibly lonely men who didn’t have any friends or hobbies and whose lives revolved around work; she emphasized that the men needed to be “losers.” Once she found a victim, she would love bomb them in an attempt to gain their trust before she would start alluding to her financial issues, eventually telling her victims that she was close to being evicted.

To up the ante, she would explain that she found a way to make money from the Yakuza, making them incredibly concerned for her and pushing them to offer to help her financially instead of allowing her to turn to the mob. Part of her strategy included initially rejecting their money, although once they tried again and she accepted it, she would focus on the most important step of “aftercare,” where she would make the men feel like heroes by telling them, “I would literally be dead right now if it weren’t for you.”

Plenty of commenters struggled to understand what made Watanabe’s actions illegal compared to normal sugaring, “sprinkle sprinkle” or host clubs, even though the clear difference is the deception. Plus, preying on people’s loneliness and desire for human connection is just repulsive. Even if it weren’t illegal, it would still be ethically and morally wrong.