I live in Atlanta, Georgia, and we have a radio station down here called WSB. (Welcome South Brother) It’s been around for a million years and is currently the biggest talk radio/news station in the city. There’s a long time host on there named Clark Howard. He bucks the trend of conservative political/news talkers on there by being the consumer advocate. His job is to keep us the consumers from spending too much, saving for retirement, finding the best deals, and of course not getting ripped off. He talks about all kinds of scams from phony calls from the IRS, debt collectors, online fishing emails and texts, skimmers at the gas station etc. He also serves the state of Georgia in the State Defense Force and helps the foster kids of Georgia each Christmas with Clark’s Christmas Kids. Look that last one up. It’s a worthy cause and heaps of fun to do.
What made me think of Clark yesterday was a scam that someone tried to put over on me. I had someone follow me on Instagram which is nothing new. People follow me all the time. This dude’s profile (his name is Andrew Jane, username vjgklp) just says “hiring voiceovers”. I followed him back and he messages me and says that they’re hiring voiceovers and to send a voice sample to a project manager and gave an email address. I sent over an email with a demo and the person wrote me back. Now, this was a different person named Morgan Sandra. She requested that we talk on Telegram. Telegram is a messaging app. I’m not too up on all the new messaging apps like Discord, Telegram, Whatsapp etc.
“Morgan” wrote me and asked for my email, country, and what language I speak. I did answer her and then she send me a message about what they needed from me. Here’s where it gets weird. Granted, red flags were already going off in my head at this point. Morgan said that she was with Gardner Productions. There is a website out there but none of these people I’ve talked to are linked. There’s no person with her name on LinkedIn with that company etc etc etc. It all seems suspicious.
What she requested was that I read 100 pages of this book (in this case it was a pdf of the Great Gatsby) in a nice even tone and I had 4 days to do it. In return, I would be paid $5,000. I know right? Seemed too good to be true. That’s a lot of money being waved at me. Also, 4 days is very tight to read that much and record it. No editing was required I was told, they have “experts” who specialize in editing. I was told that I was being paid such an extraordinary amount because of “the increase use and demand of voiceovers in our industry”. Hmmmm. Last time I checked there was a surplus of voice talent out there that will work for much cheaper than normal rates and they should have no problem finding someone to record the book. Also not the whole book huh? Just 100 pages. The pdf was 137 pages. Seems like a waste to miss the ending. Unless it’s not for listening to for audiobook purposes. Ah ha!
I reached out to fellow a fellow voice talent and she told me it was a scam, confirming my suspicions. She said they either won’t pay or will use your voice for AI modeling or both. She said to run away. Oh well, there goes that $5,000 that never was.
Funny thing is, later that night I saw another voice actor on TikTok talking about getting the exact same scam sent to him. The names and emails were different but the style and the request of 100 pages was the same. Its good to get the word out. I stitched his video to let my followers know.
Thing is, it does bruise the ego a bit when the main people that contact you are scammers. At least my name is out there and not being ignored.