New con trick targets content creators with fake brand deals

New Delhi: You might be familiar with scams where con artists trick people into revealing the OTP linked to their bank accounts. But did you know that influencers can also fall victim to scams by illegitimate agencies? 

Influencer scams are becoming increasingly common, with fraudulent agencies posing as legitimate businesses to deceive influencers into paying for fake services or representation.

You might hope that scammers will eventually lose their edge, but they always seem to have a new trick up their sleeve, ready to catch people off guard.

Exposing a new scam in the market that impacts influencers, content creator Tanvi Geetha Ravishankar, aka @thechubbytwirler exposed a new scam where the con artists pretend to be representatives of Walnut Folks, asking for money in exchange for representation and brand deals. 

In this particular case, the individual (@thechubbytwirler) got an email from Walnut Folks, where she had to fill out a form for their festive collabs, which is a common practice by some agencies. Keep in mind that this happened a month before the actual scam.

In her naivety, she filled out the form and received a call 10 days later for a collaboration with a luxury Indian wear brand, Vogue Vista Luxury. After the call, followed the usual pricing negotiations and discussions on content guidelines but the real twist in the story came when the agency representative asked @thechubbytwirler to pay upfront cash for the two outfits the brand will send her with the promise of reimbursing her later.

This raised alarm bells for the creator but she still decided to pay Rs 13,000 for the two outfits. However, she discovered that the website had bank transfer as the only payment option. By this time the creator had realised “Kuchh toh gadbad hai,” and upon cross-checking she realised that none of the influencer content that this brand page had shared was shared back by the influencers on their pages.

Suspicious, Ravishankar decided to check with people working at Walnut Folks when she realised that representatives of the agency sent her emails through a different domain ending with ‘@confluencer.com’ whereas the person acting as the representative of this company shared emails via ‘talent@walnutfolks.in’.

To raise awareness about this scam, Walnut Folks and Confluencr took to Instagram to share a post about the scam and have taken immediate action by filing a First Information Report (FIR) with the authorities. This legal step is crucial in tracking down and prosecuting the scammers. 

The Instagram post shared by Walnut Folks from its handle read, “Please do not pay money to anyone pretending to be an employee of Walnut Folks or Confluencr, asking for money to represent you.”

We have built this agency with love and passion, and many scam artists are out there fooling on our behalf. We’ve done an FIR and taken the necessary action. But we need your support. Please do not fall for these scamsters and report their numbers on WhatsApp and Instagram.”