Aaron Marcus breaks down two major scams targeting performers: agents charging upfront fees and fake clients sending bad checks. He lost $5,000 to a UK-based scammer who offered to cover a photoshoot with a check that bounced. Trust your gut and do your homework before taking any deal.
Hi, I'm Aaron Marcus, and welcome to my Acting and Modeling Quick Tips series. Today I'm going to be talking about scams, and it's a very important topic because unfortunately there are lots of acting and modeling scams that take place throughout the world. So here are a couple really quick tips. Number one, if an agent is asking for upfront money, I'd be very concerned about that. The one exception to the rule though is if an agent is asking you to be on their website or on a web That is customary. But if you are being asked to pay a monthly fee, an upfront fee, retainer fee, that would concern me tremendously. Here's the other thing, and I'm going to make this very long, incredible story very short for you. I followed a scam. I wanted to see how these people did the scam. It was really— it was very intriguing, and they were very good at it. So here's a little bit of a warning. It's an internet scam. Okay. It's a scam that's been around for a while. And essentially, somebody wrote to me. They said they were based in the UK. They loved my photos. They wanted to hire me to do ads throughout Europe for a specific company. I knew it was a scam, but I wanted to go along with them just to see how it worked. So to make a long story short, they were going to hire me. They were going to send me a check for $5,000, and instead of flying me to the UK to do the shoot, they were going to send their photographer and makeup artist to me. Because supposedly these people travel all over the world shooting models for different campaigns. So what they would do is they were going to send me a check for $10,000 so that way I could pay the makeup artist and the photographer. So here's how the scam works. You take the $10,000 check, it looks like a real check on an American— of an American bank. You cash the check. When you do the shoot, you pay the photographer and makeup artist their $5,000. And then a few days later, you'll get a notice from the bank saying— Oh, no. Saying that it was a bogus check. You were out that $5,000. So just really quickly, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is not real. If your gut is telling you something doesn't quite feel right, trust it. Your intuition is probably correct. And unfortunately, with these scams, they know how to press your buttons. They know how to push your buttons. They know what to say to you to get you really excited. This might be your You only get one chance. Look, you just have to be really careful. Do some homework. And you know what? If you have any questions, always go to my Facebook page, facebook.com/howtomodel, and just ask your question. You don't even have to use any names there. Just tell me your scenario and I'd be more than happy to answer it for you. And maybe others who also are part of my acting and modeling community there will be able to answer you and let you know if they've experienced this type of behavior as well. I'm Aaron Marcus. If you have any additional questions, you can always get to me at aaron@howtomodel.com. Also, don't forget about my private online mentoring programs. It's howtomodel.com/coaching. Look forward to talking with you again soon. Thanks, Aaron.
