Photo Booking Scam

I received this email yesterday and within 60-seconds of reading it, I had picked it as a bogus email.

Here are a few indicators:

1. “Hello” – just hello without  a name. Sure, you can receive emails without your name, but it all adds up in this instance. Strike 1.

2. “coming to your town” – a nice generic reference to where I live. Indicates to me that it is a generic spam type email. Strike 2.

3. “based on your expertise in the feild of photography” – wow! who uses that type of language when you could simply say “I want to book your services”. Strike 3.

4. “work is 3hrs every day” – sounds too good to be true. Strike 4.

5. “take you in their vehicle” – well, I don’t get into anyone’s vehicle without knowing a whole lot more on the detail front. Strike 5.

6. “credit card for upfront deposit” – now that does sound legit, though I’m still skeptical and I don’t actually accept credit card payment unless it is via PayPal. Strike 6.

7. “master CD of the video” – I thought Jimmy was after a photographer? Mixing photography and video is another warning sign to me. Strike 7.

8. “balance will be paid…at end of tour” – sorry Jimmy, but if you want to do business with me, the balance is paid before the tour starts. That’s just how I run my business. Strike 8.

And if all that wasn’t enough to convince me that this was a scam email, then the 20-second on Google sure put the nail in the coffin (and it really did take 20-seconds).

Here is just one thread on this how this scam works on Flickr. There are countless other links to these types of scams, just Google “jimmy cena scam”.

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