Hello Everybody,

I'm posting this in the Newbie forum because I worry for the newbies who might be taken in by it.

Advertised as a casting call supposedly based in Melbourne for a paid shoot, a person requested that respondents respond to his casting call via his gmail account rather than directly through MM. That alone is a bit strange, so I responded to it. Sure enough, I immediately received an email from a person whose name differed to that of the person who listed the casting call (which appears to have been removed) claiming that he represented "a modelling agency" and who wished to represent me. He requested that I call "his office" and provided me with a Sydney phone number (Sydney is around 1,000km away from Melbourne - why would an agency in Sydney wish to represent models in Melbourne? When I called this numbed I asked precisely that of a person who introduced herself as a Jen Fine, who has previously been accused of scamming on MM. She told me that she "has a wide range of clients" but strangely, no name for her company and no physical address!).

Then came the kicker (I was playing along now): she wanted me to deposit $40.00 into her bank account as a "bond" which would be refunded to me when I showed up to my first shoot. Insurance, she said, against models who had failed to show for shoots in the past.

Yeah, right.

Now, obviously $40.00 isn't a lot of money but scamming is a numbers game - if this organization manages to convince ten of us to hand over our moolah - great! They've made $400.00 for doing absolutely nothing (and that's assuming they stop hounding you for cash after you've paid this "bond:" they might think of other charges for their "services" that you absolutely must have in order to secure the privilege of their representation). Then imagine if they convince a thousand people to hand over their $40.00... Well, you can see how this would be very profitable for them!

Don't be taken in by these casting calls. It's a bit weird that a photographer would request that your initial contact be via a gmail or a hotmail account, as this one was (although after making your initial contact on MM you may indeed exchange email addresses, obviously) rather than via the very platform that the casting call was advertised, for one thing: and no legitimate agency charges you a "bond" for their services.

Go well.

Hope you, and anyone receiving such a scam on MM will promptly *FLAG* the message and report it to MM's moderator staff.

Private messages on MM have this cool feature where you can *REPORT/FLAG* the messages where there are scams and spam so they can get those people removed from the site.

Unfortunately, those features don't work, and they can't remove those people if users don't do their part and report those messages.