Hotel sex parties and the compromise machine

Note: names are altered but this anecdote is otherwise accurate to the best of my knowledge.

A friend of mine 'James' who works in the world of corporate 'risk management' was approached by an acquaintance 'Ben' for advice on a 'personal matter'. Ben was late 40s, working in finance, in shape, newly divorced and had recently started dating a woman in her early 30s who he had met on a dating app.

She was attractive, 'open-minded', a kindergarten teacher and things were going great, but Ben was concerned about one thing. She had invited him to attend an invite-only sex party at a high-end hotel. Ben was excited about the prospect but understandably concerned about whether it might be a scam, trap, or similar — and so he was asking James for advice.

James told him that of course there was inevitably some risk, and that it could not entirely be mitigated but that if Ben insisted on going ahead with it, he would advise the following.

1. Not to bring any cards or ID, take only cash and pay whatever with that.
2. James could arrange a retired police officer (ie private security of sorts) to wait outside the hotel. When Ben arrived he would text the man the room it was scheduled to take place in, and he would have a small portable buzzer that Ben could hit if anything went 'wrong', and the retired cop would shortly knock the door down and escort him to safety.

At this point in the conversation, Ben said it was all getting to be too much trouble and it was no problem, he would just not go.

A few months later...

James ran into Ben on the street, and the latter could not contain his excitement.

"You're not gonna believe what these parties are like"

He couldn't resist sharing how for the last several months he'd been going to these hotel 'events' with this girl and how amazing they were. All the different movers and shakers, the different women, all the 'girlfriend' swapping, and so on.

Obviously Ben had completely forgotten his 'decision' not to attend, and what they had 'agreed upon' at their last meeting.

So what's the deal?

When James relayed this anecdote to me, my first reaction was that surely this is some kind of honey pot operation. James agreed that most likely it was. He had not bothered to relay this to Ben at their street encounter since obviously by this stage the damage was already done and — thought Ben had not seen any negative outcomes thus far — there could already be many compromising recordings of himself already on file.

How the compromise scheme probably works

After a brief back and forth discussion, the following is what James and I presume to be the blackmail system that is likely being employed:

1. Blackmailers recruit and pay good looking girls (with low morals) a fee of some kind to approach and seduce men on dating apps with mid to senior-level corporate positions. Their job title can be quickly ascertained during initial get-to-know-you chat exchange and then verified by checking that the name and photos match Linked In.
2. Married (aka cheating) guys make fine targets, but newly-divorced guys are even better for reasons that will be clear later.
3. The girls start 'dating' these guys, and soon after invite them to the regular 'exclusive' sex party at a hotel 'friendly' to the operation. From the guy's POV, a hotel seems safer than going to someone's house, and appears to be 'neutral territory' despite each room being rigged with hidden cameras. When the 'couple' arrives, there are other 'couples' (aka other prostitute scammers and dupes) who are also excited to participate in this, so everything seems above board. Group psychology also makes it easy to get the ball rolling with their activities. The women are presumably paid a fee for each time they are able bring an (vetted) guy along and get him to participate in proceedings.
4. According to the guys, these sex-party events happen 'monthly' but that's just what they have been told individually. These same women are likely not really 'kindergarten teachers' or 'cupcake chefs' at all, with those jobs just designed to make them seem more innocent, feminine and naive. As such, they likely have the entire week free and could be hitting the hotel every night with different batches of men if they had the energy and motivation.
5. The women can also leverage supposed cultural (Asian) social expectations of eating/spending time with family, living with parents until married, and so on. This way she may not even need to see the guy more than maybe once a week for dinner (if that) and focus on seeing him at the sex-party events, which she is being well compensated for.
6. These women can also claim to be 'open minded' and that they don't feel the need to demand exclusivity from their target guy. The target sees this as a 'dream situation' since he can also continue to play the field. The flip side is that even when physically together, the girl probably doesn't even need to hide the fact that she is communicating with other men (aka victims) and can manage the associated logistics of this without incident.
7. This whole 'casual relationship' only needs to run for a few months, by which time the guy has become comfortable with the sex-party proceedings and has been induced (encouraged) into participating in the most 'adventurous' proceedings that he will likely ever agree to. At this point the girl can simply 'break up' with him and as such also stop inviting him to the sex parties. The guy is not too disheartened since he figures this girl was not a 'keeper' anyway, but what a ride!
8. Cut to a few years later: the guy got tired of playing the field, settled down with a new woman, got married and had a kid with her. His career has been on the up and up and he's now a managing director or partner or whatever.
9. The blackmailers, meanwhile, have been keeping tabs on him via social media both personally and professionally, and they choose the ideal time to strike. The guy's company has a massive project to select a vendor for, or have $500m of institutional investor funds to invest, or whatever. The guy is now in a position of 'influence' to make decisions on these things, and he gets a phone call.
10. They tell him that he either does what they need him to do, or the videos get sent to his new wife, his employer, family, and so on. There's a decent chance that he's not even the only guy in that organisation who has been compromised in this way, and the blackmailers have multiple 'points of leverage' to bypass the checks and balances, and make the deal or whatever go the way they want.
11. He complies, and that's it! They probably give him a 'sweetener' so he feels better about complying, and they wait until they need him for the next thing.

The great thing about this approach is that they don't need every target to become a honcho at an organisation, it's just a numbers game. They compromise enough guys at a certain level of a certain kind of career trajectory, and a solid percentage will inevitably end up in the 'decision-making' positions anyway. The amount they pay these girls is a pittance for what they make in the end when their 'winning horses' come in. The victims won't talk or share any of this when it happens to them, so nobody learns their lesson and the cycle continues.

Now extrapolate this approach to every country and every industry, and you start to get an idea on how the world works the way it does.

NOTE: I will ask James if he's heard any updates on this case, and report back here — not that I expect Ben to share even if anything was to arise.