The scam doesn't arrive like a scam anymore. It arrives like gossip.
A friend tags you onFacebookwith a winking caption and a blurred thumbnail. A Telegram channel promises the 'full video.' On X, the same keywords tumble through the feed in a familiar rhythm: 'Pinay,' 'bold,' 'leaked,' 'gold medallist.' It's designed to make you feel you're the only one not in on it, and to punish your curiosity the second you try to catch up.
This week, two supposed 'viral video scandals' have dominated Filipino social media: one attaching the label 'Pinay Gold Medalist' to a creator named Zyan Cabrera (also known online as Jerriel Cry4zee), the other pushing searches for a Siargao-based creator, Vera Hill—better known by the nickname 'ChiChi'—through a supposed 'video call' leak.
They look like separate storms. The unnerving part is that they may be the same weather system, just wearing different costumes.
The 'gold medallist' hook is almost perversely clever. According to LatestLY's analysis, scammers timed the Zyan Cabrera hoax to coincide with the 2026 Winter Olympics, hijacking a global event to ride search traffic and algorithmic momentum.
By branding her a 'Bold Gold Medalist,' they could funnel people who were simply looking for legitimate Olympics news towards a fake 'leaked video' link instead.
🥺♥️#goldmedalist#viralvideo#zyancabrera
Then they layered on a second lure: a rumoured 'boyfriend video.' It's the oldest trick in the digital scandal book—add intimacy, add shame, add a sense of forbidden access—and suddenly the click feels inevitable. That's the point.
LatestLY calls the entire 'gold medallist' narrative a 'total fabrication,' statingZyan is not an Olympianand the label was deployed as an SEO weapon rather than a fact.
What's being stolen isn't just attention. The trap described in LatestLY's piece is explicitly about phishing: links designed to trick users into handing over logins or otherwise compromising their accounts. And once one account is taken, the scam gains something more valuable than any single click: credibility, delivered through your own friends list.
Source: International Business Times UK
