Acting coach Aaron Marcus breaks down a scam targeting models: fraudsters pose as overseas ad producers, send a fake check for $15-20,000, and ask you to forward the overpayment to a photographer. The check bounces weeks later, leaving you liable for the full amount. He shares warning signs like unsolicited high offers and requests to pay third parties.
Hi, my name is Aaron Marcus, America's premier acting and commercial modeling career coach, the author of How to Become a Successful Commercial Model, now in its 5th edition, the founder of howtomodel.com, and I've been making my living as an actor and a commercial model for over 26 years. I know I was telling everybody that I was going to continue a series of videos about auditioning, booking, and shooting a job for a new NBC TV series, and I will continue with that. But something just came up that I think might be very, very helpful to everybody, and so I wanted to do a video blog on a different topic for today. And this one deals with scams, and that's why I think it's so important. You've got to be very, very careful out there. And I had somebody on my email list send me a question wondering whether this is something she should pursue. She was a little concerned about it. Hi, Aaron. And so it got me thinking, look, this is something everybody needs to know about. So let me tell you, I experienced this a couple of times, and the people that are running these scams, they're actually very good. They're smart. They know how to push the right buttons for people who are interested in acting and modeling. And so let me share the information so you don't run into a situation where you lose a tremendous amount of money. And also really feel bad about the whole experience. So basically, here's how this thing works. It's an internet-based scam, and what will happen is you'll get an email from someone saying that they saw your photos, they loved your shots, they are shooting this major ad campaign that, in my situation and also with this woman that contacted me, it was going to be running throughout Europe. And for me, I'll just tell you about mine. I was going to be on billboards all throughout Europe, and I knew it was a scam right away, but I wanted to follow along with them just to kind of see how they do it so that I could learn from the experience and once again share it with you. So I emailed back and said, sounds great. I'm assuming then you're going to fly me to London to do the shot because this is where this guy said that he was based. Although with his English, his grammar, it didn't seem like English was his first language. But anyway, so I went along with it. And what he told me was, he said that actually their photographer and makeup artist, they're traveling the world. And what they do is they go to where the models are. It's much simpler that way, more economical for them that way. And so he would come to the States and shoot me. And so I'm going along with this and I said, sounds great. And so then I decided I wanted to test this guy out. I wanted to see, does he really have any information about the industry at all? He was telling me that he was going to pay me $15,000 for the shoot. And I can't remember, it was either $10,000 or $15,000. It doesn't matter. It was a very large amount of money. So I'll stick with $15,000 for right now. Okay. And I said, okay, well, this is running on billboards all throughout Europe. And I asked him, so what is my high exposure format fee? High exposure formats are billboards, posters, ads on the side of a bus, on the internet, on a package. And typically models get additional fees on top of your regular base pay. So he said, well, let's do the shot first. We'll take a look at it and then we can discuss that further. So anyhow, so I'm going along with the guy and everything is sounding great. And the next letter, email that I get from him was saying that since the photographer and the makeup artist are traveling a lot, what they're going to do is they're going to send me a check for $20,000, which is $5,000 more than what we agreed to, but they wanted me to pay the photographer and the makeup artist out of that $20,000 check. So I keep the $15,000, but I pay the makeup artist and the photographer $5,000 because it's easier for them to pay the photographer since they're traveling and all that. So that is how they do it. And let me explain it to you. So I called a local bank and I also called a government office just to find out, a local state government office, just to find out about scams. And they were very familiar with this type type of scam. Here's how it works. They will send the model a check for, you know, the $20,000, and it looks like it's from an American-based bank, and you go and you deposit it. You take out $5,000 so you can pay the makeup artist and the photographer, and you do the shoot and you pay them, and then a couple of days later— What will happen is you're gonna get a notice from your bank saying that the check was not good. It bounced. Now you're out $5,000, and the bank is going to say, we want our $20,000 back because you cashed it and it's a bad check. And you'll probably get a penalty for that as well. And you're out of luck at that point. They've already left. They've done the shoot. You'll never see them again. You'll never hear from them again. So You've got to be really careful. And as soon as I sent an email back to this character supposedly in England, I said, love to do the shoot with you. Sounds like a great project, but I don't pay photographers and makeup artists, so you'll have to take care of that. But certainly, you can send me the $15,000 check. That's when I stopped hearing from them. So if you hear something from somebody and it's completely out of the blue, And they're offering some incredible things to you, just be very careful. Do your research, do your homework, ask the right questions. And the hard part for us is sometimes we base decisions based on our heart and not our brain because we want this to happen so badly. And believe me, I get it. I've made some of those mistakes in the past. Not quite like this, but just doing things that weren't necessarily all that smart. I just wanted it to be true. So, So anyhow, I hope this is helpful to you. I hope this saves you a lot of stress, a lot of time, a lot of disappointment, and a lot of money. And as always, if you have any questions at all, feel free to email me at aaron@howtomodel.com or on my Facebook page, facebook.com/howtomodel. And if you've ever experienced anything like this or other types of Scams where people were really just trying to rip people off, please send me an email. I'd love to read about it, and then certainly I wouldn't use any names or anything like that, but maybe I can share it with other people too as a warning. So anyhow, also I hope you guys can make it to my workshop on the 13th of October, How to Get Paid Acting and Modeling Jobs. There's a link on this page. You can read about it, and also if you're not free on the 13th, everything is recorded, so you can always watch it later. We'll send you a link. You can watch it as often and as many times as you like, whenever you want. So anyhow, I hope this was helpful to you. Looking forward to talking with you soon. I'm Aaron Marcus.
