How to verify any offer in twenty minutes
Not everyone is a scammer. Most people who write to new models are honest, and honest professionals expect to be checked. These four steps cost nothing and expose almost every scam.
Ask for details you can check
The client's name, the agency's name and office address, a landline number, a website, the names of people you can look up. Ask politely and directly. Someone who avoids giving these is telling you everything you need to know.
Check them yourself, from scratch
Search for the agency or the photographer yourself. Find their real phone number and email on their own website, not the ones you were given, and contact them to confirm the offer exists. Look at published work, at how old the accounts are, at whether the name is spelled exactly right.
Never go alone to a first meeting
Bring a friend, a parent or a partner to any first casting or shoot. Insist on an office, a studio or a public place during working hours. If that is a problem for them, you have your answer, and you have avoided the most dangerous kind of scam.
Keep the conversation where it started
Stay on the modelling site or the social network where you met until you have verified the person and the job. There, messages can be reported and profiles removed. If you must move, keep screenshots of everything, with dates.
If after all this you are still in doubt, turn the job down. There will be other jobs. Any real professional will be glad to give you real, verifiable information.
Scam test
Answer eight quick questions about the offer you received and get a verdict based on the six warning signs of a model scam. Nothing is stored.
Take the 2-minute scam test