Singaporean influencer Chrysan Lee has taken to TikTok to publicly shame a creator agency she says has owed her and other creators money for years — and whose CEO, she claims, blocked her on every platform when she chased payment.
Lee said the agency, which operates across Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, first paid her late on projects dating back to 2021. The last straw was a project completed in October 2022, for which two invoices were issued after the scope expanded. "Weeks passed and no payment, no news," she said — until her own client confirmed in March 2023 that it had already paid the agency in December 2022. The agency, not the brand, was responsible for paying the creators.
Lee described sending multiple emails to the agency and its CEO — whom she identified only as 'P', with the agency's name hinted at by the initials 'G' and 'T' — including a final notice in May. When she obtained his number and messaged him on WhatsApp, she said, he read it and blocked her immediately, then blocked her on nearly every other platform. The agency's finance team initially tried to help, she added, but eventually went silent too; every employee she had worked with has since left.
"I didn't want to do this but P, I have tried contacting you multiple times," Lee said in the video. Malaysian creators joined in, saying they faced the same treatment — turning a single complaint into a cross-border grievance.
The episode exposes the fragile economics of Southeast Asia's creator middle class. Influencers sit at the end of a payment chain — brand to agency to talent — with little leverage when an intermediary stalls. Naming and shaming on TikTok has become the enforcement mechanism of last resort. The agency has not publicly responded to Lee's allegations.
The grievance taps into a structural problem in Southeast Asia's creator economy. Unlike traditional media, where unions and standard contracts offer some protection, influencer work runs on informal agreements and long payment chains: brand pays agency, agency pays talent — eventually, sometimes, partially. Creators at the end of that chain have minimal leverage, especially smaller ones who fear that complaining publicly will mark them as "difficult" and dry up future bookings.
Lee's case is striking because of the paper trail. Her client confirmed in writing that the agency had been paid in December 2022; the money simply never travelled the last mile to the creators who earned it. That the CEO allegedly responded to payment chase messages by blocking the sender on WhatsApp and every other platform turned a commercial dispute into a story about contempt.
Malaysian creators piling on with similar accounts suggests the problem is regional and possibly systemic to the agency in question. For brands, the episode is a procurement warning: when your agency stiffs the talent, it is your campaign — and your reputation — that ends up as the TikTok cautionary tale. Industry watchers say clearer escrow-style payment terms and direct creator contracts are long overdue.