It would be a full time job for me to update this blog everytime I find a scam posted or someone I know shares a scam they found with me. There’s no way to keep up. My overall goal is to equip you with the know-how to see the red flags and avoid being scammed at all costs.
Sometimes I can’t name names. There’s a few reasons for this:
- scammers can also be identity thieves who stole someone’s picture and name. You don’t want the real person to get in trouble.
- It’s just a fake made-up name that will evaporate anyway. Like one I covered, Jake Smith became Jeffery Cooper became Ethan Snith.
- Maybe I’m wrong. Or maybe the poster is just inexperienced and went about things the wrong way.
I do however want to bring the following items to light, and also reinforce the red flags you should look out for when vetting a scam job post.
Red flags to look out for when vetting a scam:
- bad grammar/spelling
- incorrect film terminology. (I.E. Production Assistance instead of Assistant.)
- unusually high rate or weird weekly rates/hourly rates for usually a day rate job
- Job poster turned off commenting on the post. That’s usually because people started getting suspicious and asking the right questions.
- large blocks of text that ramble on about the proposed job.
You can also do your due diligence by briefly looking into the job poster. Do they have no Facebook friends? Did they recently make an account, or change their name and profile pic? Did they post a very similar job in multiple groups with different dates?
Now these things don’t guarantee a scammer, but if you checked a few of them off a list, that’s a real good indicator.
Kevin – But Not Really
An Atlanta makeup artist was contact by a legit enough sounding job poster. They used a real person’s name who is in no way connected to the resulting attempted scam, so I deleted the last name.
It uses a familiar format: Fake Kev contacted the makeup artist saying they found their info on “Georgia Production website.” Sometimes it’s called a film directory or similar, but a lot of scams used this “I found you on (something that doesn’t exist).”
They also said “Kindly,” “regards,” and “send over your resume/credits.” which are all things I’ve seen a hundred times in these scam emails.
Although our makeup artist was excited at the opportunity to department head on a project, they kept a cool head and did their due diligence. They asked for a deal memo, tax docs and contact info for the additional makeup artist. This is all normal, good stuff to check on if you’re offered a job.
Then this mystery job poster sent a $3000 check to the makeup artist’s home….from an electrical company.
Folks, never, ever receive payment before a job. It is a check phishing scam. After that check goes in your bank and you immediately withdraw the funds for some equipment they ask you to pay for or, in this case, hiring an additional makeup artist, the bank finds out a day or two later that the check is fake and now you’ve sent your own money right back to the scammer.
“It’s me Kevin the film guy” said the scammer
Our makeup artist did not get scammed because they knew when things weren’t adding up.
The scammer tries to guilt the makeup artist by saying they already confirmed (they didn’t) and trying to place blame on them for not stipulating a lack of deal memo was a deal breaker. And the scammer clearly didn’t know what a deal memo was because they proceed to call it a “demo” a couple times.
Sometimes these scammers know just enough about film to get by, but their story falls apart very quickly when a professional digs in.
Also note the poor grammar that indicates a non-native English speaker. “The payment was unable to be deliver,” “I will hand over to you meeting,” “You should have tell me this.” Look, I get it scammer, using past tense is hard. But if you want to make the Duolingo owl happy, you have to at least try.
Cinebyte
This one is posting a lot so I wanted to bring it to everyone’s attention.
Another crew member in a Facebook group called out Cinebyte Productions as a scam, even posting the highly suspect email he received from the company.
The email is full of bad grammar and is just a huge block of text. I’ll reiterate what I’ve said in the past. When you are a professional in the film industry and someone offers you a job, it usually starts. “Hey, so-and-so recommended you. Are you available to cam op a scripted series in May?” And then you proceed to get more details on further communication.
The Cinebyte job postings are posted by several different people (or the same person using different names, isn’t this fun?). They also use multiple emails. So far I’ve seen: cbytefilm@gmail, lanawilson496@gmail, cinebyteproduction3, etc.
The postings are fake but the company is real. Someone stole David’s name and pic and the company name to seem legit.
I wanted this entry to end here. Guys, I’m tired of chasing these scams. I just want to catch non-Pokemon branded creatures in Palworld and relax for once. But there’s one more I’ve got to cover.
The Music Video Scammer
I’ve covered another shapeshifter before. He went by Jake Smith, Ethan Smith, Jeffery Cooper and every version of those names. Now we’ve got this guy.
Someone named “Eric” (but not really, follow along) posted this job for a PA on a music video. Responsibilities included driving talent and “on-set assistance” (groan).
A number of PA’s hungry for work fell into this supposed job. I learned they did do some driving around, but it became apparent that things were not on the up-and-up. PA’s were expected to pay for lunch, pay for an iPhone SE and headphones. They picked up Ken, a man who was supposedly in a car accident and couldn’t drive himself around. I suppose Ken, who claimed to be the rapper’s manager, the contact they were driving around, hair/makeup artist who, on closer inspection, might not have been an actual HMU. The driver/PA did three days of pickups/drop off’s to such places as a park in a seedy neighborhood, Cookout and, amazingly, Dave n Busters.
Every PA who responded to and did this job (it must have been more than the 3 days, as multiple people were scammed), did not get paid and were ghosted by Ken/Eric.
So Ken/Eric got called out on Facebook, and not long after he changed his name and profile picture to Chris, copying another real filmmaker’s profile pic and image, and posted this job:
I wasn’t ready to post the blog when this went up, so I immediately posted right after this that “Chris” was the same guy who scammed the music video PA’s. Within minutes, “Chris” deleted or changed his Facebook again. Whatever identity he picks next, I’m sure he and many others are out there ready to scam again.
A lot of our scammers are overseas, trying to steal your account information or get you to send them equipment and you’re out the money. But some scammers do this up close and personal. Let’s keep our community safe and keep each other informed.
Previous posts on this topic:
Bridget LaMonica 