See also the main SAAFE.info site for more Support And Advice For Escorts

Author Topic: The big scam agency thread  (Read 178172 times)

Anika Mae

  • Member
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 2,323
    • brighton escort
The big scam agency thread
« on: 05 August 2008, 06:29:27 pm »
--Most of this post deals with one type of scam, as it's by far the most common. Near the bottom there is some advice about other agency scams. There's also some links to help you find a real agency.--

There is an old scam that people have used to get money from wannabe models for years. "Sure, you'd be a great model, we'll get you loads of work! You'll need to have a portfolio though, just give us ?200, we'll do a photoshoot with you and you'll be ready to start your exciting new career!" In the last couple of years, people have started making a mint by exploiting wannabe escorts in the same way. We don't want you to be one of them, but there's no point in just warning against specific scams. Since they have no interest in establishing a business, they'll drop a name as soon as there are too many warnings about it and start with a new one, so you need to learn to spot them in any guise. Fortunately, most of them are obvious if you know the signs.

These scams mostly target the huge number of people who would like to cater to markets that in reality are vanishingly small: male escorts for women, and social-only escorting*. They'll take money from anyone though, and to make sure they don't exclude any potential victims, they'll let you know that there's a great demand for escorts of any gender, age, or level of attractiveness. You'll find these ads in local classifieds, and as websites online.


Here's how to spot the scammers:


1. They're marketing to escorts, not clients.

Nowhere is the demand for escorts so high that clients are in surplus and escorts are sought after, it's not how business works! Every service provider needs a steady stream of clients to make money, especially the sort of money these people promise. Therefor a real agency will want to get some good escorts on the books and then go out seeking clients for them. If it's a website you're looking at, look at it from the perspective of a client. If it has less to offer clients then it's offering escorts, it's not going to attract clients.


2. Claims of unrealistic, undiscriminating demand.

"There's a huge emerging market of women seeking male escorts." There are loads of women out there who want to pay you to have sex with them. Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? That's right, it's too good and it's not true. In the heterosexual sex and dating market, women are in demand, not men. Sure, sometimes women get horny or want some company and don't have a man readily available, but they don't go looking for anyone with a penis who they can pay to spend time with them. That's a separate topic though, back to this one.

The other market scammers invent is the one for social escorts. This one is a lot more believable because of the "time and company" fiction that's rampant in an attempt to avoid prosecution (even on many independent escort's sites, where it's not necessary). It's a fiction though: we're being paid for sex. Not always full penetrative sex, sometimes more talking and cuddling then sexual contact, but it's still about the sex. Plenty of clients do like to take an escort to dinner, sometimes to social functions or on holiday, but most of them will want to have sex at some point. Like the market for straight male escorts, the market for escorts who only escort is very very small.

If you're dedicated you can try to find these markets, but you'll have to be special and lucky.


3. You have to register to see the escorts.

This is something that scam agencies often do and real agencies rarely do. When using an agency, clients don't want to put a lot of effort in. In addition, some of the fake agencies won't even let you make a booking with one of their escorts if you try.


4. You need to spend money to make money.

This is the most important, but you won't know that's how they operate until you sign up, so look for other signs to avoid wasting your time. In many cases you do need to spend money to make money, but being an agency escort isn't one of them (other than getting supplies for the job). Escort agencies take on escorts, advertise the agency, take calls from clients and set up bookings. Only when their escorts have been paid for the booking do they take a fee, in the form of a commission charged on every booking. This is usually 30%, but may be more if you work in a premises which the agency provides.

There are a lot of websites that take a monthly or annual fee in return for featuring you on the website, but these aren't agencies, they're advertising sites. Most of them aren't worth the money, and if they're posing as agencies you should rule them out immediately.

Some fake agencies are quite sneaky about the fee, there was one that proudly claimed to have no upfront fees. It worked by giving you the first month free. During that time, a booking would be arranged but later canceled. Another booking would be requested, but after the initial free month, so you'd need to pay the fee if you wanted to accept it. The unfortunate men who got this far would turn up to the booking to find no client.

There is only one reason a genuine agency may ask you to part with money before you get a booking, and that's for photos. Just about every agency operates online these days and they'll be able to promote you more effectively if their clients can view your pictures. They may be happy to use pictures that you provide, but if you don't have any or they don't like the ones you have, they'll probably want you to do a shoot with their in-house or preferred photographer. Don't give an agency money just because they say it's for photos though, be critical. Do they fall afoul of any of the first three points? Are they established? Can you find evidence that they really do offer an escort service to real clients in your area? If you're not sure about paying for photos, agencies should be able to get you some work initially by promoting you on the phone.


If you want to see some examples
...of real agencies and fake ones, just search Google for 'escort agency'. The results highlighted in yellow at the top, and the ones at the right are sponsored links. The list below the yellow bit contains Google's best-ranked sites for the search term. The links which aren't sponsored are real escort directories and agencies, while the sponsored links are almost all scam agencies. You can see that the scams are focusing on attracting escorts, while the real ones try to attract clients. The real agencies cover areas no larger than a couple of counties, while the fake ones cover the whole country, continent or world. The real agencies have comprehensive marketing strategies which have got them ranked highly on Google, while the fakes just have throw-away sites that will only get noticed if they pay for advertising. By the way, they pay every time you click, so if you're upset by what these people are doing, click away!


Other things to watch out for.
The scam described above is the most common, but there are other ways people posing as agents may take advantage of you. They might try to get some money from you by way of the overpayment scam. Others are just after free sex. One way of doing this is to require an "audition" with the owner, one of their "male escorts", or one of their "regulars". Don't do it, you're not required to prove your skills before you can work, a fully-clothed chat is all it takes. Another way of doing it is to send you on a job that you never get paid for, with a person or people who aren't real clients, they're the owner or people colluding with him. The agency will say they're taking the payment by credit card and will pass it on to you, but they never do. You could also be paid with a cheque that bounces. Some agencies do accept credit card payment, but you shouldn't take that kind of booking until you've worked for the agency for long enough to know that they'll pay you.


The one rule for avoiding scams is that you should never give anyone money or provide a service until you've been paid.
And for payment you should only accept cash in your hand. No cheques, credit cards, bank transfers or currency you're not familiar with.


There's another article that deals with this issue here, and another thread on this forum here. You should now be able to tell the difference between a real agency and a scam, but if you want to ask about an agency, please do it here. If the agency turns out to be real and people want to discuss it, I'll move it to it's own thread.


If you're a woman who's willing to have sex with men, you shouldn't have much trouble finding a real agency. The Punterlink listings are a good place to start:
http://www.punterlink.co.uk/london_agencies.htm
http://www.punterlink.co.uk/regional_agencies.htm
There's also some advice about chosing an agency in this thread.


*Running an agency that provides sex is illegal, so many genuine agencies have a disclaimer to say that they're not offering sex. That sort of thing isn't cause for concern, but if someone makes a point of telling you that their clients just want charming dinner companions, assume it's a scam.
« Last Edit: 09 September 2008, 01:36:43 am by Anika Mae »

xw5

  • Administrator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5,849
    • I should be updating this instead...
Re: The big scam agency thread
« Reply #1 on: 05 August 2008, 07:08:49 pm »
Wonderful stuff!

The two slight additions I would make is that in at least some Google searches, the scammers have the top 'real' links as well as paying for ads. Don't trust Google to sort out the scams for you.

The other is to reinforce the bit about doing something about them. Yes, click on the links, but also complain to the place you found the ads! (If you can't trust these ads, why trust any others?) Complain to the Advertising Standards Authority! (At least one scam's Google AdSense ads have had to be toned down as a result.) And if you spot a new one, post about it here or elsewhere! (Especially if it caught you.)
'The Ian formerly known as SW5'. What they said: "Indispensable", "You are our best resource", and (hours later!) "I'm afraid that you're being made redundant..."

Winding down YourEscortSite.com

Anika Mae

  • Member
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 2,323
    • brighton escort
Re: The big scam agency thread
« Reply #2 on: 05 August 2008, 07:30:55 pm »
Yes, good points. Also, some real agencies do use Google ads as part of their marketing. It's quite easy to spot the difference though: the real ones say "we've got escorts", the fake ones say "we need escorts".

Maybe we should use the thread in the warnings section to list scams.



Edited to add that I'm wrong! I just saw an ad for Platinum Select which meets my real agency criteria. Platinum Select is quite a slick-looking site that you can't immediately tell is a scam. Look further and you'll see that what they're offering is merely advertising, and not very good advertising since you have to sign up to see the ads.
« Last Edit: 05 August 2008, 07:43:34 pm by Anika Mae »

Hermione

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 216
Re: The big scam agency thread
« Reply #3 on: 05 August 2008, 10:28:54 pm »
Forgive me if this has been posted elsewhere.  What, if anything, is actually being done to catch/penalise the people behind these scams? 

xw5

  • Administrator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5,849
    • I should be updating this instead...
Re: The big scam agency thread
« Reply #4 on: 11 August 2008, 07:58:59 am »
I just saw an ad for Platinum Select which meets my real agency criteria. Platinum Select is quite a slick-looking site that you can't immediately tell is a scam. Look further and you'll see that what they're offering is merely advertising, and not very good advertising since you have to sign up to see the ads.

Yes, Platinum are one of the ones who are good enough at gaming the rankings to get the top one for some searches.

What you see from them depends on what you search for - if you're doing a 'male escort' one, they're trying to sell you the impossible very rare dream, but searches they think are for female escorts get the 'we have loads of cheap escorts, pay us money to see more' scam.

What, if anything, is actually being done to catch/penalise the people behind these scams? 

Not enough!

One bunch is in Spain and seem to be involved with other 'payment up front' scams ('We have a client who wants to buy your timeshare, please send money... oops, they dropped out, you can have a refund after a year... oops we've gone into liquidation...' repeat with new company). Their latest looks to be Escortopia, but they have many, many more and doubtless have a host of other names to use as word gets out each time. That and being in Spain makes it possible for them to keep going.

'The Ian formerly known as SW5'. What they said: "Indispensable", "You are our best resource", and (hours later!) "I'm afraid that you're being made redundant..."

Winding down YourEscortSite.com

Fallingstar

  • Guest
Re: The big scam agency thread
« Reply #5 on: 11 August 2008, 11:29:34 am »
Brilliant advice Anika mae ;D

I have personal experience of Platinum select myself as a few years ago when i was younger and dafter i fell for one of their scams. At the time this involved 'signing up' as an escort for what i thought was a one off payment of 20 quid via debit card. Of course i got no work and when i checked my statements on my on line banking months later (i used to be terrible with money) I discovered they had been taking 20 quid per month out of my bank account!!!!!!!!!!!! It then took countless emails,complaints etc before they cancelled my details.

Its terrifying to think how many unscrupulous people are making money out of peoples naivety   :(

Anika Mae

  • Member
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 2,323
    • brighton escort
Re: The big scam agency thread
« Reply #6 on: 11 August 2008, 01:38:44 pm »
Yeah. I spent at least an hour writing that post and was quite pleased with it until I thought about what a tiny proportion of people would find it before handing their money over. It's depressing.

xw5

  • Administrator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5,849
    • I should be updating this instead...
Re: The big scam agency thread
« Reply #7 on: 11 August 2008, 02:25:34 pm »
quite pleased with it until I thought about what a tiny proportion of people would find it before handing their money over. It's depressing.

Some people can't be helped because they will hand over money first and only think about it later.

Think about how many people have been warned off - one day, I will do the sums of how much has been saved by the SW5 message board and have a very big smile.
'The Ian formerly known as SW5'. What they said: "Indispensable", "You are our best resource", and (hours later!) "I'm afraid that you're being made redundant..."

Winding down YourEscortSite.com

brandy@saafe

  • Guest
Re: The big scam agency thread
« Reply #8 on: 11 August 2008, 08:43:33 pm »
Yeah. I spent at least an hour writing that post and was quite pleased with it until I thought about what a tiny proportion of people would find it before handing their money over. It's depressing.

I think you and XW5 did a fine job myself. There's not really much else that you can do or say.

blonde_amanda

  • Guest
Re: The big scam agency thread
« Reply #9 on: 24 August 2008, 07:07:18 pm »
hi girls,

i know this question may have been asked before but are europiean escorts agency any good? i am about to pay them ?325 (what i have been told, i can't work for them before i pay that amount as this is insuarence and without i cannot work for them, hence why the charge but i still do not know what kind of insuarence it is and what it covers) because they are telling me that they have an appointment for me for this tusday even without seeing my picture or asking for my details and what i offer!!!??? does this sound like a scam or am i reading into things too much???

would love to hear some opinions as i am not sure what to do, yes i have read posts about giving money up front but they're saying it's for insuarence purposes only so not sure if it's a scam or not.....please help

amanda xx

Anika Mae

  • Member
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 2,323
    • brighton escort
Re: The big scam agency thread
« Reply #10 on: 24 August 2008, 07:47:14 pm »
It's a scam. As I said, the only valid reason you'd need to pay upfront would be for photos, and even then you should be skeptical. The fact that they don't want to know anything about you except that you have the money means it's 100% pure scam.

blonde_amanda

  • Guest
Re: The big scam agency thread
« Reply #11 on: 24 August 2008, 07:59:17 pm »
thanks for your advice anika mae!!! that's what i thought as well but wanted to know what you girls thought about it as well!!!! do these scam agencies not get prosecuted, or how do they run on legitimate terms ???? im confused xxx

brandy@saafe

  • Guest
Re: The big scam agency thread
« Reply #12 on: 24 August 2008, 08:01:34 pm »
hi girls,

i know this question may have been asked before but are europiean escorts agency any good? i am about to pay them ?325 (what i have been told, i can't work for them before i pay that amount as this is insuarence and without i cannot work for them, hence why the charge but i still do not know what kind of insuarence it is and what it covers)....

Running or owning an escort agency where sexual services are offered is illegal, so I'd like to know exactly what type of insurance it is they have and who they pay their premiums to.
It's crap.

blonde_amanda

  • Guest
Re: The big scam agency thread
« Reply #13 on: 24 August 2008, 08:08:30 pm »
they have never said what exactly insuarence covers but they do not let anyone go out on jobs without that insuarence, which sounded like a scam to me after having read this site!!!!! although they say its for the insuarence purposes but when i asked them what it covers, i was told its bruises and 'in case anything happens with a client' which made me very wary, as in what do you mean 'in case anything happens with a client?!?!?!?!??!

i am very surprised these agencies do not get prosecuted???!!! does it mean that they are legitimate because they do not get get prosecuted????

thanks for the advice girls xx

Anika Mae

  • Member
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 2,323
    • brighton escort
Re: The big scam agency thread
« Reply #14 on: 24 August 2008, 08:41:11 pm »
Oh no, they're not legitimate. I believe the large operations are based on countries where it's difficult to get at them. There are probably loads of smaller ones too (those ads in local papers) where there are just too many to chase.