I get job solicits from time to time, so its not unusual that I git hit up by brands I've never worked with before. What is unusual is when it's a brand like Complex asking me to do a high end fashion shoot.
I'm an automotive photographer, so ya...
This was awesome at first as I take any challenge to do something different and on top of it this was more than my going rate. Here is the initial e-mail...
It came from and older 500px.com account that I have.

This could not of been more innocent or straight forward and the e-mail format seemed legit. So i responded with a simple "Yes i'm down for this, feel free to call me and we can discuss the details.
I didn't get a call but I did get this back...

At this point I'm still on board minus some suspicions, I mean come on! I'm no English major but those grammatical errors are atrocious! I started digging for some evidence that this was for "reals" and came across this 2018 PDN Article, click on the link below to read that.
As I find that article I get a response from Joshua from the fake Complex e-mail. Mind you there really is a Joshua Espinoza working at Complex so kudos to these guys for doing some research.

Now I'm totally aware that this is a scam. I gotta say that i'm super excited since this will likely become a better time waster for me than playing Fortnite. So I unleash my own brand of nonsense....
I send the fake modeling agency an email and this is the meat of the scam...

My reply, because I love donuts...
This is as far as i've gotten so far. I'll update more when I'm about book them for my fake Donut and Ninja shoot. Stay tuned and be careful out there