Aaron Marcus, a veteran actor, breaks down a voice-over scam that offered him a $1,030 union job via email. The red flags: no usage details, no studio info, no union breakdown, and a request for his checking account for a direct deposit. He explains how to spot the con and why you should trust your gut.
Hi, I'm Aaron Marcus, and I'm actually, I'm in a hotel right now. I'm getting ready to do a bunch of workshops over the next few weeks in Florida, and I just ran across a situation that it really is, it's nasty. I want to share it with you to make sure that you don't get fooled by these people. Uh, look, I, I've been a full-time actor for over 30 years. I've booked over 1,200 jobs, and I'm pretty good with being able to smell scams, uh, immediately. And this one smelled like a scam right from the very couple First couple words that I saw in the email. Basically, these people said that they, they heard my voiceover reel on a website, and it is a legitimate website where I am sent information about auditions and jobs. And they said they wanted to book me. And just from the way they were talking, it was so vague, I knew that it wasn't real. But I always like to follow through with it to see how they run their scam, so that way I can share it with you. So I I wrote back to them immediately even though I knew it was a scam and I just said, I just need to make sure that this is a union job. I'm a member of SAG-AFTRA, the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, because I can only do union acting jobs. And they wrote back, they said, yes, it's a union job and we're going to pay you $1,030. Now, that just doesn't make any sense because if it's a union job, it's— the fee is going to depend on its usage. Is it a narration? What kind of narration? Is it a radio spot? If it's a radio spot, where is it airing? There are so many different factors that are involved with it. There was no mention about a paymaster. A paymaster is a company that needs to be used if it's a union job. The paymaster handles taking out and withdrawing all the proper taxes, sending information to the union about the booking and the monies. They also make sure that the producer pays a specific amount of money on top of what I'm paid towards my pension. No mention of any of that stuff. So when I mentioned that I'm booked out of town for a couple of weeks, the guy said— I'm assuming it's a guy— the guy said, well, look, I'll get you the words pretty soon, but here's what we're going to do. I'm going to be able to get you half the money up front, and I will send that to you, and then as soon as you complete the job, I will send you the other half. Once again, there was no mention about studios, whether they expected me to do this in-house. In my home with my equipment? Nothing. So here was the clincher, just to fully prove that it was a scam. They said, look, we're going to send you half the money up front, so we just need your checking account information so we can make a direct deposit. And I wrote back, and I didn't want to get into battles or anything like that. I just said, thank you very much, I'm just too busy, can't take on any other jobs right now. Look, that's just not how Things work. So I wanted to share that with you. Look, if anything doesn't feel quite right to you, trust your instincts. There are people that you can always ask just to help verify whether this is legitimate or does it feel like a scam to you. But I'm telling you, trust your instincts. And I just wanted to mention, if you are watching this on YouTube, make sure you subscribe, click the notification button. That way, every time I post a new video, you will be notified. And if you're not watching this on YouTube, then you can always visit my channel. It's youtube.com/howtomodel. There are tons of great videos there. Share that with your friends so they can learn from me as well. And if you've ever been involved or heard about a scam, please go to my facebook.com/howtomodel page and share it there so that way other people can learn about this. And you can also do this on the YouTube channel. Anyhow, I'm Aaron Marcus. I'm so glad I got a chance to share share this information with you, and I really look forward to talking with you again soon. See ya.
