This post is months in the making, but earlier this month we had National “Slam the Scam” day, and you’ve undoubtedly been hearing a LOT about scams recently - whether on purpose or not. We here in the entertainment industry have long accepted scams as a cost of doing business (for better or worse). And after what feels like an unending slog of heightened scam climates over the last few years, and now in the post-Oscars haze where you’ll undoubtedly be seeing ads about how YOU TOO can be an oscar winner one day….So, what better time to REALLY get into the dark, scammy side of this biz? Buckle up, this is a long one!
First, let me say, I have been scammed - this is not a holier than thou, let me debunk all this bad shit that never happens to me newsletter! No one’s perfect. It was the summer of 2012, I had a part-time workstudy job at my college while also working part-time as an unpaid intern (a different type of scam for a different newsletter), and later film/tv assistant, for a talent management company. This was great until the work study budget dried up in July and I had to be furloughed until the next semester started. Desperate for money, I started looking for another short term part-time job that I could fit in around my talent management schedule, but no one would hire me with such limited availability. Turning to Craigslist (sketchy, but not as sketchy for gigs in 2012 as it is now! We didn’t have the post-TaskRabbit gig economy infrastructure yet!), I found a job doing part time social media management. I interviewed with an HR manager named Sarah and got the job for $16/hour writing and posting content to Facebook and Twitter (Instagram wasn’t popular yet!). $16/hr, in 2012?! Already a red flag that my broke self desperately ignored! I REALLY needed that coin. I then spent the next few weeks logging into their social media management platform to compose tweets and facebook posts, they were very particular about how many posts we needed to have an hour (20+ across both platforms) and what copy was associated with the 3-4 dozen consumer brands that we were posting about (Of note - we were posting from the scammy marketing company’s accounts, not the official brand accounts). They had strict rules with not scheduling posts and posting “organically”, how you had to work 10+ hours a week to be “cost efficient,” and at the end of the week sent you a report of how your content had performed! Seemed legit! But after 2 weeks, I still hadn’t been paid, and after more weeks of excuses and follow ups, was ghosted. I stopped working after almost 2 months of nonpayment and nonresponse - I was far too patient! Resigned (literally and figuratively), I went to their Facebook page to see if anyone else was still working and posting, and sure enough - lots of wall posts saying “THIS IS A SCAM!” …finally, gut-punching, confirmed. I had been scammed!?! But, what were the scammers getting out of this? Thankfully, my identity was never stolen, I was working as a contractor so they did not have my SSN, but they took my time, and they did steal the labor of myself and the other social media assistants posting.
Even now, 10+ years later, I think WHY?! Why have the other social media assistants and I spend hours making posts about Blue Bunny Ice Cream and Ivory Soap? Why have so many rules? Why send the performance reports?! Was it such a long con that we all tapped out before they could get any usual information out of us? I’m truly open to any theories you want to send my way, because it still baffles me.
I share this story because 1) it’s bizarre, 2) we are all capable of being scammed, 3) some scammers operate at truly elite levels, and 4) you have to watch your back everywhere. I learned from this experience and ever since my Scam Spidey Senses are strong. One of the biggest ways they flex now is calling out when my own, and when my friends’ “desp-o-meters” (A term coined by Scam Goddess host, Laci Mosely) get too high. My desp-o-meter was HIGH in the summer of 2012, and I paid for it. I wanted so badly for this job that checked every box to be the thing that would solve all my problems…in the end it just created more of them.
And boy oh boy, have desp-o-meters been HIGH in the entertainment industry these last few years, between the pandemic and the strike, people are getting DESPERATE (TM). If you feel like every day you see a new person you have never heard of but is an “expert” trying to sell you something, or a casting director posting not to respond to a fake breakdown that has been published in their name - you’re not wrong! With a pending IATSE strike and that deadline article, we can only assume the desp-o-meters will continue to rise. But, with knowledge comes power, to not get scammed!
For the rest of this newsletter, here’s what I’ll cover;
Known Scammers to Look Out For
How to Run Your Own Grift (ethical? version)
and lastly, links/related reading/more things if you’re also obsessed with scams (like me!).
**Footnote: That Deadline article is a scam in and of itself! Don’t take it too seriously! Deadline is owned by Penske Media Corporation (PMC). PMC also owns Variety, Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone, etc etc. These companies are largely funded and dependent upon $$ coming from Studios and Networks (Who do you think buys all those FYC ads?!). Negative marketing tactics like false scarcity, FOMO, etc are used constantly in scams to put pressure on “the mark” to make a decision that may not be in their best interest. What’s the angle here? Consider that IATSE is about to go into a contract renegotiation in a few months with all these studios. IATSE will need crossunion support, just like SAG-AFTRA and WGA did. By selling a narrative of scarcity around work, hardship to survive, and making it the dominant narrative in the industry, IATSE comes to the table with a higher desp-o-meter to make a deal, and may not have the degree of peer support they need. Anytime you have information that is presented to you that feels really great or really bad - question it, there’s a reason the story is being polarized, and it’s usually for someone else’s gain.
Scams: The Sophisticated
What makes a sophisticated scam? In this context, a sophisticated scam is one that requires industry knowledge to execute and/or may include industry-specific tools/platforms/practices for a perceived third party validation. These are the scams that may involve high tech, or require a couple of steps from both the scammer and the mark. The long game scams. How have these manifested in the acting world?
Tech companies using casting notices to boost their CAQ! Yes! This is real! As someone who has worked at tech startups alllll across the spectrum from early seed stages and beyond, acquiring users cheaply can make or break a new tech product. A few years ago the personal link platform Flowpage (now Flow Code) posted a casting notice to ActorsAccess (since taken down), Backstage and the like, as part of your submission, you had to make a (free) account in Flowpage, PUBLISH IT, and then send it with your submission. This was all under the guise of nonunion, face of the brand, $500 new media gig. Surprise, surprise, it wasn’t an authentic casting (real posting from a real company, but not actually trying to make content). I reported it to Breakdown Services, as did many others I’m guessing, because they simply responded, “This [posting] has been removed and is under review by Breakdown Services.” Notably, this scam was posted in June 2020 - guess flowpage’s desp-o-meter was pretty high in the early pandemic too. This wasn’t the first company to try this, and surely it will not be the last. We see the same, more expensive and less sophisticated, idea with projects that do massive open calls - it’s not really about the casting (if they find their person, bonus!) - it’s about getting press, marketing the project, and building hype before production has even started. Just keep this in mind the next time you’re inclined to hit up an open call!
Impersonating casting directors to post fake breakdowns, offer fake workshops to enroll in, etc. In the last few year I have seen this scam hit Damian Bao, Sarah Finn, Taylor Casting and even one of my own agencies, Heyman Talent!
A few scam warning screenshots
What exactly do the scammers get out of this? Oftentimes, it’s money, or it’s the setup for a classic check scam. But for casting, it can cost you your reputation, and for actors it can not only cost you money, but your time, and also, your ever valuable HOPE. It’s hard to keep going when you get knocked down by a scam, and that can’t be understated. Which makes this next, sophisticated category of scam even more insidious - THE FAKE PRESS SCAM!
What is a press scam?
A fake press scam can go 1 of 2 routes;
The first and most prevalent, referral based news sites like Voyage, Shoutout, Bold Journey, Canvas Rebel, etc. You’ve surely seen them before, it’s always the least impressive person you’ve ever known giving stock answers and it begins with “Today we want to introduce you to ____.” The interviewee produces the entire interview by filling out a questionaire for a writer (working under a pseudonym) to publish unedited. Other than again, scamming you of your time with little ROI for it, and trying to sell you print copies that will never come, this operates as the MLM of press scams. You get featured, by referring a bunch of other people for the publication to feature. The outlet then banks all this content for free, which they can then monetize with ads. Some conspiracy theorists have also suggested all this interview material is then resold to content farms, bot accounts, etc, though it’s hard to verify. But if you’ve ever had a petty thought seeing someone you know excitedly post about their interview, when they don’t really do anything? And you thought you were just being a hater? You were probably being a hater, and correct! People can waste their time however they want, but don’t we want to be smarter? Have a better entertainment industry? We also don’t want to get scammed out of print editions that never come. Give “voyage magazine scam” or “voyage magazine legit” a google - stories abound!
The second form of press scams are the ones where a scammer is impersonating a real journalist or publication, trying to get access to you (whether to get answers to those darn security questions on accounts they are trying to hack, or for more insidious purposes) or simply get you to click a link so they can hack your device/accounts. I actually have firsthand experience with this one! In September 2021, I got an email “Re: Vogue Magazine - Images for Article.” Anyone that has taken a basic email marketing course has learned the “tip” for making email subject lines have “Re:” in them, as it suggests to the receiver that this is correspondence they have already engaged with and are interested in. But me, in communication with Vogue, when very few of my big(ger) projects had come out? Surely not! In the body of the email to “follow up” was a referenced “previous email” which read:
On Sep 17 2021, at 7:12 am, [writername]@vogueofficial.press wrote:
Dear Lindsay,
My name is [Writer’s Name] and I am a member of the editing team at Vogue Magazine for content relating to women empowerment and gender equality.
As an initiative to promote women empowerment, we have a section in our magazine that is titled "Woman of Substance'. For this section we choose nearly 5-10 women every week, from all over the world who are pursuing professional careers and/or entrepreneurship. The purpose of the section is to map the careers of these women, so that our readers (80% are women) can get motivated and draw inspiration.
We will like to feature you in this section. You might ask "why me?". Well, in a male dominated society, where women participation in the economic activity is less than 20%, we need to show role models. These role models don't need to be super-women or celebrities. They just need to be women who have diverged slightly from the normal course of the life of an average girl, and have developed into contributing members of the society.
Like all media houses, we also source out content from third party providers. Your information, article content and contact information (email) was provided by Walnut Media (a leading content producer in our market).
We got some of your pictures from our photo library, internet and social media etc. and edited them for publishing. I am sharing the pictures on iCloud Photos; you will shortly receive an e-mail with the link to the album. Kindly let me know if you are ok with their inclusion. We also took the liberty of editing the pictures, so please feel free to choose the ones that you will like to include.
Regards,
Already, my scam spidey senses were going off! 1) Fake previous email 2) People pitch to VOGUE, not the other way around! 3) Women’s empowerment and gender equality is not exactly Vogue’s media niche... 4) The email’s signature contained the Vogue logo with addresses for Vogue offices in London and Dubai…Screw Anna Wintour, the New York office and the parent company, Conde Nast!
Now, the scammers did do a little homework, they picked a woman who was an actual freelance writer for Vogue, and they invested in custom URLs (again, leading me to believe this would have gone a phishing route if I had responded).
I found the real journalist’s contact info and forwarded her the email saying this seemed like a phishing scam but wanted her to know someone was using her name, she responded quickly saying thanks, Vogue was aware of the scammer and take care! Crisis averted! Could I have EASILY been sucked into the excitement of getting featured in Vogue? Yes, of course, but let’s be real, Vogue doesn’t care about me! They don’t now, and they certainly didn’t in 2021. In saying this, I’m not talking down on myself or shitting in the idea of manifesting (Though…guilty, I do that…often), I’m being realistic! Vogue doesn’t care about me! And if I didn’t have this very objective view of my value prop in this industry, it would be really easy to have my hope preyed upon, to think YES, FINALLY someone sees how hard I’m working… To bypass the critical thinking step, because we so badly want something to be true! But, if it’s too good to be true…well, it’s too good to be true!
Scams: The Classics
The classic scams, the ones where you see on a Facebook post or a tiktok and think, wow, people are still falling for that?! Not to shame the marks, if you have been blissfully unaware of scammer tactics, I am jealous! These are just scams that have been around, and been so prevalent for so long, it’s surprising how unsurprising they are, and that scammers are still trying them. What are some of these classics?
The OG, The Check Scam! How it works: You submit for a job. You booked it! The employer then says, something along the lines of “We’re going to send you a check to pay for [your wardrobe, travel, per diem, whatever] and a little extra so you can [pay the stylist, tip the driver, make a deposit on the costume, etc]. Can also come in the form of “Here’s your payment for $X” then you receive a check for $XY. They say, oh just send us back the extra, that was a mistake. You cash the check, you make the payment/send the money, the check bounces, and you’re out the money you paid. We’ve all seen it or had it happen to a friend…It truly sucks, because it preys upon the excitement so many artists have to work and be paid for it, that we don’t question the mixups and want to be easy to work with. But it’s 2024, who doesn’t have direct deposit?!
Another scam that’s been in entertainment for awhile is the “advance fee” scam. This is when an agency or management company will require an upfront fee or payment in exchange for representation. This one comes up a lot particularly in modeling and print work - you never have to pay to get pitched for a job! Any rep that asks for a fee vs. a % of a booking, is generally a scammer.
My one addendum to this, is some agencies in smaller regional markets DO charge a website fee. It’s weird but it usually is something you pay directly to the website hosting platform (vs. the agency itself), and it’s usually because these smaller regional markets operate in a fringe format outside of the Breakdown Services ecosystem. If the agency is still franchised with SAG-AFTRA, don’t let a website fee scare you away, it’s likely still legit!
A scam taking over the Atlanta market lately is just…basic robbery. More targeted to production workers than performers (but no one is immune), you apply for a job, are booked and then given an address to pick up equipment or report for set. When you arrive at the address…you just get robbed at gunpoint (Join Atlanta Film Production Group for more fun stories!). Be careful!
These scams are so disappointing, because they demonstrate why our industry is so uniquely rife with scammers
Our industry is heavily relationship based, we don’t want to “burn a bridge” by upsetting someone, asking too many questions, or accusing them of something, etc.
Our industry also prioritizes people who “are easy to work with” (which often translates to…people who are easy to take advantage of), we want to jump right in, do the most, and do it with a smile, with a hope of being asked to play again.
Our industry preys upon people who “love it so much, I would do it for free!” meaning, we don’t have a discerning eye around details or pay rates, the way we should. This comes up with traditional scammers, but also in the form of our very legit employers that can commit wage theft. ALWAYS check that Exhibit G before you leave set and make sure your time is accounted for correctly.
Our industry is fuels the constant churn of jaded filmworkers with the replenishment of doe eyed hopefuls. We often lose veterans in our industry (to things like jobs with health insurance or a consistent wage…)and have an ever increasing pool of newbies, meaning more optimism hope to take advantage of, and less people around to share wisdom - a bad mix!
If you read that list and thought, whoops, guilty! That’s okay, we’ve all had these feelings, because we love this work! And we want to do a good job, but we have to get smarter and not let the love lead us to people who will take advantage of that.
Scams? Lies & Vaguely Shady
This is perhaps my favorite section, because at heart, I am merely a Virgo fueled by Haterade, and all of these scammish lies and shady tactics leave me feeling very validated with my choice to be petty and side-eye everything. By the end you may say, go touch some grass, girl! But for now, take a Tik Tok break for Infinity Song’s Haters Anthem, and then let’s continue!
What makes a “Scam?” (The question mark is key!) in the lies and shadiness category? It can be as simple as harmless lies another actor tells you in passing to build influence (literally or figuratively), to full blown aspects of how our business is run in ways the general population is not aware. In no particular order, some harmless lies and how to debunk them:
You meet an actor in say, a class or in a social media exchange, and they mention they have great reps (let’s go absurd, and say something like, Gersh…like an actor in your casting associate workshop is telling you they are with Gersh or Management 360 - wild!). This little insidious detail is used by the other actor for a moment to try and wield some power or influence over you (they have “better” reps and are therefore “better” than you). Maybe it’s to get information out of you, sell you something or maybe it’s just an ego trip. Regardless, you, the actor on the receiving end probably feel, a mix of jealously and inferiority, for at least a second or two. Well, snap out of it! If you can’t just mentally shake it off, go figure out if it’s true! You know the drill - http://resumes.actorsaccess.com/[actorname] or some variation on that. Do they have Gersh linked to their AA profile? No? Well then, they aren’t getting submitted on Breakdown services by that “better” rep, so it’s not doing them a whole lot of good. Even if it were a hip pocket situation…again, not a whole lot of good. Perhaps, the “better” rep is listed…does it say for all departments, or is it for something very broad like Commercial or Voiceover? If it doesn’t say anything, then we head over to IMDBPro and look and see if the specific rep is attached…and OH, that rep is a Junior Manager? Maybe you can’t tell so you go find the listed rep on LinkedIn and you realize, it’s a rep that only handles commercials? Not a lie, but not as big a get as the actor was upselling. It may feel a little insane to do all this research, but people lie about this kind of thing all the time, it’s infuriating, even if it doesn’t hurt anyone at face value. Why continue feeding the hierarchy, why try to make other actors feel bad? I personally, am petty. and I like to know what I am really dealing with. Knowledge is power.
You ever meet someone on set or in class, you connect online and holy shit! They have like 250K instagram followers? And then you look at their content and are wondering to yourself…how? Fake followers. People buy followers alllll the time. In a world where commercial breakdowns will ask you for follower count, I don’t blame people for buying followers, it’s super cheap and can give you an ego boost. But if you buy the followers, you have to buy comments and likes too! It’s very obvious when someone has 100k followers, but only like, 200 likes on a photo, the math isn’t mathing. As someone who has worked at tech companies that have employed influencers for marketing, I can tell you there are ways to check how many of someone’s followers are real (Hypeauditor is the big one, but there are a BUNCH of tools for this now), while you don’t need to invest in an auditor tool, it’s just something to keep in mind, if you see yourself up against someone who seems to have more followers than you for a role - if they aren’t a bonafide influencer with an authentic fan base, casting and production will realize very quickly before hiring and they won’t have a leg up after all. The more you know!
Celebrities are all doing the things they say they aren’t! This might feel 20 steps ahead of where we are as actors reading this newsletter, but it’s important to realize so much of what people ahead of us is manufactured, not by talent, or even luck! Just money and…secrecy!
First, Backgrid (essentially, paparazzi for hire)! I learned about this over the summer! You know how certain celebrities will be seen at the right time/right place? This isn’t a coincidence, their team is literally booking paparazzi to be there and capture the moment with Backgrid. It’s basically like Getty Images, but with the illusion of less curation and more accidental nonchalance (when in fact, it is highly curated and not an accident). You ever see someone new being photographed as an up and coming celebrity? Their team is crafting this image with Backgrid! Next time you see a Buzzfeed or People magazine article about someone and find yourself asking who???? Take a look at the photo credit, it’s probably Backgrid, and you can just smugly smile to yourself knowing it’s all manufactured.
Second, I know we all know this, but a reminder never hurts….every gorgeous person you see is wearing fake hair or on accutane at the very least, has a full glam team, even for a simple day of running errands (because they will book Backgrid to photograph them being ‘just like us’ but super hot!), and at the very most is probably getting regular “hot girl treatments” or on ozempic or something of that ilk! Just the other week, Oprah stepped down from the board of Weight Watchers, and Sydney Sweeney joked about Ozempic in her SNL opening monologue. It might be a more “open” secret, but it’s still happening, even in smaller, more insidious ways…very rarely was anyone “just born with it!” and don’t you forget it!
And moving onto the “Vaguely Shady” category:
This deadline article, I won’t name any of the people in this article on my own, because some are very litigious, but I wish Deadline has been a little more critical and challenging of some of the individuals featured here, because some of their business practices can be questionable! Are they scams? No, but are they under that umbrella of vaguely shady? Yes.
Spaghetti Slinger Reps, these are the leaders of the “Vaguely Shady” subcategory! If you ever ask a casting professional if there is a “blacklist” of people they won’t call in, they’ll all say no and if someone is ever perfect for a role, nothing will stop them from being called in (take this with a grain of salt). However, there ARE reps/agencys/management companies that have bad reputations and will do more harm for you than good. Many of them are even SAG-AFTRA franchised, so you think, they have to be good! BUT, you can be legally compliant while violating industry norms and causing casting to retaliate. Largely this happens with those massive “starter” agencies that sign hundreds of people, they spam breakdowns submitting their entire roster, leading casting to just filter all their submissions out on Breakdown Express. They may get the occasional booker, but that’s luck, not the norm. A lack of any real strategy…that’s bad business, and that’s shady. A general rule of thumb, if an individual rep has over 150 clients, or they have more than 3 clients of your type…avoid. They aren’t curating, and if they have no clear sign of strategy, they probably fall into this spaghetti slinger category. Want my list of shady reps to avoid? Reply to this newsletter, I gotchu!
NYCastings and knockoff casting platforms: I wrote this review for NYCastings years ago, and I think it still holds up! So many platforms regurgitate content from other sites, charge exorbitant fees with no ROI, and/or engage in spammy practices. Breakdown Services/ActorsAccess, Casting Networks, Casting Frontier, Casting Workbook, 800 Casting, Backstage, CastIt and Spotlight are the only platforms worth investing in at any point in your career, and if your rep doesn’t require (like many do not require the last few listed here), don’t get it! In many cases, you probably only need ActorsAccess, don’t let FOMO trick you into paying for something you don’t need!
Casting Director Alexis Winter said it best - Anyone or anything that says not to look at reviews/comments/anything talking about them or their business other than the content they put out…is vaguely shady! Third party validation is a real, and if anyone says it’s wrong/doesn’t align with the narrative they are selling you, question that! Not only the other reviews, but why they think any scenario in which actors are uninformed is the best solution…again, knowledge is powerful! Google everything followed by “scam” or “legit” sometimes you find nothing….sometimes you find a lot!
Lastly, my biggest bone to pick is always with the seeming neverending parade of career coaches popping up in our industry. It’s why I started this newsletter in the first place! I DO think a technique coach/acting teacher is highly valuable…but an acting business coach? To quote the youths, it gives me “the ick.” Unless someone is credentialed as a teacher/coach/psychologist AND has the acting experience to back it up…what are you paying for? And why is it something you have to pay for vs. something you can ask an experienced friend about? What happened to mentors?! What happened to friendship!? What happened to mixed level acting classes?! What happened to just simply being PEERS?! What happened to community that doesn’t come with a price tag? I have some career coach people I personally like - and most of these people also have free offerings beyond their paid services, because it’s about VALUE (ie, Jenna Doolittle has Actors Home Base, but also the free ActorsRise newsletter, Audrey Moore has paid coaching, but also the free Audrey Helps Actors Podcast, these are free offerings that aren’t just “tasters” to launch you to paid services either), but other career coaches have also “scammed” me out of more money than any other aspect of this biz (Yep, we ALL fall for it, me included!). Big promises, and then no ROI (But always spun as “You get out of this what you put into it.” Haven’t we heard that one before?!).
One of biggest wastes of my career was a contractually committed (Big yikes just typing that now!) year long career coaching program, because I truly believed this program must know something I do not! Turns out, they didn’t! They were selling the illusion of having information and answers to ambiguous questions, the missing piece that once I finally had, everything would make sense and success would be on its way! Always get reviews and try to chat with graduates of the program (of which there should be - if the program is designed for you to never graduate/move on, they aren’t really teaching you how to level up!). I’ll personally never do a coaching program again, and I encourage everyone to skip what is essentially a coaching subscription model and to seek a solid peer group they can chat with instead… And also, just trust yourself to make the right choices for you and learn from the ones that end up not working out. I know us actors loooove direction, but we also don’t NEED someone to tell us what to do for our entire careers and every step of our business. It’s okay to make mistakes, it’s okay to go with your gut, or try something, and then try again. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and we rarely get anything right the first time, but we have time!
Known Scammers to Look Out For
Bad Casting Website/Platforms: Nine9, Explore Talent, One Source Talent, Talent 6, ActorsClub, Talent Jug, Instant Cast, Project Casting, Talent Meet Rep
Questionable “Gurus”: Alan Baltes, Scott Powers (is he even still around?)…and probably a few others you are thinking of right now, but I won’t list because they are very litigious! You know who!
Scammy schools: Barbizon, John Robert Powers, John Casablances, John Palotta (so many Johns?!) - if you are looking into modeling, be especially on guard, most places selling “modeling classes” are not legit. Michele Lonsdale-Smith.
Conventions that do nothing for you: IMTA, ProScout…And let’s be real, any convention where the point is to get “discovered” or get a rep. I know in the Southeast, Talent Inc is pretty popular, but I question the long term success for the children that participate.
Questionable reps: Elen’s Kids, Bailey’s Entertainment Group, Bolt Worldwide, Michael Zanuck
Questionable CDs: Baruch Santana, anything under “Golden Era" (it’s Scientology, and not upfront about it), etc.
Day job adjacent employers that will try not to pay you: Characters-for-Hire
I also have a list of producers that don’t pay, directors that have been known to abuse their crew (one of which has lots of projects get posted to AA…), etc. Want it? Shoot me a message!
How to Spot a Scam
We’ve now covered the spectrum of scam and some repeat offenders, but other than having a list to consult, how do you spot a scammer? How do you know when a new scam is popping up to protect yourself? It’s hard to have one concrete definitive approach, as scams are always evolving. However, this past fall I had the opportunity to sit in on some of Cornell’s Executive MBA classes, the class was focused on “Managing and Leading Organizations” yet by the end, all I could think, was this not Scamming 101? A few things that came up;
Needing to make choices quickly, ie, leveraging our First System of Thinking, which is about fast, quick, gut reactions. This is a classic scam tactic, whether someone is asking you to transfer money ASAP or sign up for a class before the price going up, timeboxing to add pressure is a KEY tactic. It forces you to make a decision without thinking too long and hard about it (because if you did, you might think otherwise). Walk away if you feel rushed - anyone/thing that wants your time or dollars will still want them when you have had time to make an informed decision.
“Ethical” loopholes can be created just by using certain types of language. When pharmaceutical salespeople could no longer outright give doctors money for prescribing their drugs, they started to pay them outrageous sums to be “thought leaders” and speak at dinners, conferences, etc…as rewards for prescribing their drugs. Different packaging, same outcome. How does this translate to acting? Largely through the rebrand that we have seen of pay to play auditions as workshops (I actually AM pro-workshop, but it IS a scam!), seeing production roles transition from paid positions to low/no pay internships (On set, but also regional theatre is particularly guilty of this). If you ever see something and think - wait, isn’t that just ___ ?? Realize this name change is probably not to your benefit, even if it seems like it is.
Personalization is a huge driver in manipulation, this is actually why community is so powerful, because when we are a group, we are less likely to be targeted or feel the need to take action personally. Although…these days, a lot of community in the acting industry comes with a cost. Or joining an organized community make take some scammy tactics in and of itself - it never ends!
Manipulated Third Party perspective - Whether this is responding to fake comments from a burner account on a tiktok reel or using client testimonials that are paid (ie, get $100 off your next class when you leave a review), third party validation (ie, public support or “vouching" for someone), can be used to manipulate you into thinking a trusted perspective is being offered, or authentically responded to, this good or service is in demand, etc. Unfortunately, the only way to combat this is through research, but any review you can find that is simply an “Ashley S.” or “Mark B.” with no photo or identifying information…take with a grain of salt. Similarly, authority can be used to legitimize a scam. All it takes is 1 casting director to support a coach or one studio exec to speak to a class, and the entire operation seems legitimized - which is not always the case. Look at institutions with one off influential speakers with scrutiny!
Faux “vulnerability” - if someone who always has the answer is now asking for advice, or your perspective, understand this is a tactic to get you involved in their decisionmaking and create commitment. It can also be used to develop a sense fo trustworthiness and relatbility (they have questions too!).
I could go on forever about this (like, implicit association, forced reciprocity, and emotional appeals!). -but I won’t. That said, if you want to chat, reply and we can keep the scam sleuthing going!
How to Run Your Own Grift
Scams aren’t just for BAD ACTORS (Get it?! Scam puns!), if the system can be manipulated for bad, you can also manipulate it for a boost.
Pretend you live anywhere with an address via iPostal1. Further legitimize it with a Google Voice number with the same area code. You can be a local hire ANYWHERE (More on this in a future newsletter…).
Ask for what you want while maintaining the veneer of being easy to work with/nice/whatever by pretending to be your own publicist or assistant. Make it even more legitimate by purchasing a custom URL or email address via Ionos. Back it up even further with a fake LinkedIn profile, which you can supply with a photo of a fake AI-generated person via This Person Does Not Exist or Unreal Person.
Manufacture attentiveness - I’m chronically online and STILL miss things, but you can set up Google Alerts for all of your industry targets. Take it a step further, add every target as a a contact in your email address book. You can then use tools like Zapier or Klaviyo to then generate emails reaching out when a target does something newsworthy (ie, triggers the alert), making consistent and timely outreach easy (Don’t trust the bots yet? Have the output sent to a spreadsheet or draft to review and send later).
Have any other ideas? Let’s work smarter together!
Further Research & Links
Please listen to CHAMELEON: Hollywood Con Queen! You can read about it too!
Listen to Scam Goddess podcast
Listen to The Cult of Theatre Kids
Did you see the LA Times Hulu doc about Randall Emmett? These old school tactics are still out there, like with producer David Brown.
I got your back, let’s take on this industry together, scams and all!
Knowledge is power!