How Avoiding a Scam turned into an Opportunity

An interesting thing happened to me the other day, well, two things actually. The first was “‘not so good’ interesting,” and the second was “‘pretty great’ interesting.” The first thing was being contacted by a voice-over hirer about a potential voice-over job. I know it sounds wonderful, but this email inquiry screamed “scam!” I am going to share that email here:

So, the biggest things that stood out to me were:

• For all of his enthusiasm at finding me, he didn’t use my name at all.
• There is no company name or website.

Despite this, to cover all my bases, as there are new voice hirers entering the field who have less experience communicating with voice actors, I simply responded, telling him that I am available and that he could give me some more details.

This time, when he responded, he included a website and company name but also a whole bunch of other filler information to try and seem official! He still is not using my name, however. The full email I received is below:

Okay! So, notice how he is not even asking me if I have home recording capability? He is still not using my name. He is asking me for personal information! And he most certainly can share the script with an NDA form attached. That is a “nondisclosure agreement”; a contract that comes with auditions when a script is confidential. When I turn in my audition, I also need to turn in that contract with my signature, agreeing that I will not show it to anyone. Also, the email goes on and on and on. Most inquiries for jobs are short and sweet. There may be a longer email explaining a project with an introduction but not like this…People who cast are busy, and it just doesn’t use the language or style of the voice-over world. 

Then, to keep things spicy, I clicked on the link to his company website at the bottom of his email, and lo and behold, it looked like a great production house!! I mean, wow! Lovely video examples and a pretty big-sized team. However, as I scrolled through the team members, I was not surprised at all that his name did not appear anywhere. That made me mad on behalf of this cool company. Someone is out there using their identity to scam voice actors! My frown deepened. So, I emailed the production team and let them know. I introduced myself and told them I think they are being used in a scam. I also apologized if it indeed was them reaching out…that would have been awkward, “No, it was us. And yes, we were interested in working with you…until this email. Buh bye.”

 Less than five minutes later, I got a response from the production house. They thanked me for reaching out and said they were aware of the identity theft and were dealing with it. I wrote back and said, “It was my pleasure! By the way, your company does lovely work! I’d be happy to be of use if you ever need voice-over services in the future.” Keep in mind, I meant this sincerely, as I was excited by their projects and want to collaborate with companies whose creative work I admire. And guess what, they wrote right back and informed me they had added me to their talent roster! It has not been my initial intention; what started as me being helpful for no other reason than being helpful (I would have let any company know if I knew they were being scammed, not just voice-over related) ended up building a relationship with an exciting client. What a bonus!

So, did I reply to the scam artist, you may be asking? Well, I replied that I was no longer interested, of course. I also could have ignored him completely.  Now, I could have also written back, “Hey, you are a scam! You didn’t use my name!” and told him the other ways I knew it was B.S. The truth is, I didn’t want to engage and tell him how he is doing his scam wrong, just so he can refine it and do it better next time!

So, what started as an attempted scam became a helpful act that led me to a new client with whom I am excited to potentially work. That’s interesting, the “pretty great” kind, right?

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