On the 28th of April 2020 we received a contact from a lady called Stacy Seaman. Not delving into her name too much I immediately searched for her online. Straight away it came up with a scam website. Normally I would just ignore and block these emails but this time I wanted to see how long they would play with me. Lockdown was a bit boring so this was a little bit of fun to help pass the time.
In the interest of other people searching here is a copy and paste of her original email. If you’ve landed on this page after Googling the company then I’m sorry, it’s a scam.
Sorry for the late response.
I’ll like to know if I got the right contact to a promotional videographer. I want you to create for me a promotional/instructional video for my new company, based on production and sales of organic foods (plant based food and drinks). The content created will be used on the company website and also displayed on installed HD TV in my restaurants.
1. Company Name: AMERICAN ESSENTIAL NUTRIENT INC.
2. My website is under construction which would be registered soon.
3. Full text content, background music and pictures for this design contents will be submitted to you by my project consultant. You just have to handle the layout and the design
4. I want you to add our core values, mission and vision (This information will be provided by the consultant)
5. My budget for the 3 videos is not more than $6000
6. I want this delivered in 2-4 weeks to the latest.
7. Videos will be animated
My Goals and about the project:
You will produce 3 videos, each featuring a different templates as selected by me (see below), with an approximate segment time of 120 seconds each. You will deliver 6 videos (1080p); 3 original raw videos and 3 edited videos, one for each original video. Below are the inspirational video templates below:
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8xRBTvbA0U
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEdam6FgZfA
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5w1OGknhlc
All videos will have background music and company logo which also be delivered to you by the project consultant.
AMERICAN ESSENTIAL NUTRIENT INC. is pet project and same time a business avenue for me. I will be 10 years a vegan in June and I hope to expand the business (and my brand then)
To my customers, AMERICAN ESSENTIAL NUTRIENT INC. should be able to provide over 500 plant-derived minerals that can improve the value of foods, liquids, nutritional formulations and cosmiceuticals. That way also improving value of life. Whoever purchase our products would have a guarantee of good living and relish.
Our uniqueness will be privilege of our 5 locations around Indiana and online store. Our products are also 100 percent plant based produce under strict standards from International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM). Our brand and style would also stand us out.
Other project essentials:
I want you to know that this is the first time I will be doing a promotional/informational video so I can only give you little details but you can give a better price quote and work based on the sample templates given above. The videos provided are our inspiration and how the preferred promotional videos should look like.
Kindly get back to me with:
(1) a price estimate/quote based on the inspirational videos :
(2) your cell phone number:
(3) And will like to know if you are the owner ?
Keep safe and protect yourself from the virus.
So now the story has been set. Here are the screenshots from my barrage of emails. Hopefully you enjoy this as much as I did. (There are a lot so you’ll need 10 minutes or so)
Unfortunately, this is where the story ends. I was hoping that they would plead with me to take payment another way (there are a few ways this scam works) but they never bit. We once had a guy called Abdul who accidentally transferred £69,015.00 for a job with £5889.60 (yes, mental I know). That was equally as fun but only lasted 5 days or so.
Got any funny scam stories? Comment below so we can all have a hood laugh.
Comments 12
Thank you for posting this!!!!! We received the exact email and after going back and forth a few times, and requesting a phone or zoom chat (since she was out of the country) – she continued to say “email is the best way to communicate”.
Something didn’t feel right so one of our team members went out to see if they could find anything . . . and we found this!!!
We have been going back and forth with this correspondence as well, with an email address of Queen Robinson. After many attempts to clarify the project and get an address they finally sent us the business listed as American Essential Nutrient Inc, 421 Westheimer Rd #A31, Houston, TX 77027 with a phone number for invoice only (what does that even mean?!) 502-383-115X (I put an X incase this is some poor souls real number and don’t want them getting a gillion spam calls).
Same story of “Queen” being out of the country so email is the best contact. Opening a restaurant chain in Indiana, Hynes Restaurant. Something definitely didn’t feel right. I did a search as soon as we received the business name and the supposedly Stacy Seaman contact. Something really felt off with that. Thank you for posting your correspondence, mine looks very much the same but not to the back and forth of the check yet.
We have some down time due to covid as well. So we’ll see how far they go with us. I sent an invoice and production contract that requires 50% up front and 50% upon completion. After reading your post, I added into the contract that there will be an additional 20% fee for all payments returned on top of client is responsible for al bank fees.
Author
Glad you found my blog about this. Once you know it’s fake you can plod on either just leave it or have fun like I did. Please let us know how you get on if you decide to play!
You saved us a headache with this post. Seemed phishy to me from the start. They reached out to us under the name of Brittany Heady. Exact same copy.
Thanks for sharing!
We got the same message from a Brittany Heady as well, “the check is on the way with FedEx tracking” so I won’t be responding to them or cashing the check, but will take it to authorities to be investigated some more.
We just got scammed by them, wish we saw this article sooner! $5000+ was taken and we can’t get it back. We’re going to be reporting it further to see if we can get the money back but wondered if anyone else has reported it so far?
We’ve seen that this exact email has popped up on a Reddit thread too where people received the same scam, as well as the email itself being on a post on freelancer.com with multiple bids from people who have undoubtedly been sent this email too and suffered the consequences (awful!).
Thanks so much for spreading awareness about this awful scam, we’re gutted to have lost this money due to not being aware of the repercussions of accepting cheque payments. We were adamant it was legit after being in conversation with them for 3 months prior and all seemingly being well (though in hindsight, there were a couple of red flags).
Author
I’m really really sorry to hear this Rhianna. Hopefully you can get your money back. Although this didn’t happen 😉 Their account may have been used to set up a direct debit to an animal charity for $200 per month. That would have been a very small consolation. But in the eyes of the law, this didn’t happen.
Thanks Marc. LOL I love your style!!! That is rather tempting!
As an update, we’re still trying to get the money back but no luck so far. We shall see what happens and I’ll let you know! Sad people hey!
Hi Marc,
Add us to the list of companies that could have been suckered. Just so you know their operations are global now. We are based out of India and were pleasantly surprised to receive an enquiry from a Brittany Heady based out of Houston, Texas. The rest of the mail and interactions are an exact replica of the ones you have shared. We were at the point of figuring out how to route the payment to us in India since she could only pay by cheque to an American partner of ours, when we smelt a rat and turned to Google.
Thank you so much for posting this piece. It shows the power of the net and the interconnectedness of the world we live in.
Author
Sorry to hear that you have been dragged through a bit of this. I got another one not long ago and I started playing the game with them but then lost interest.
Thank you for this post! A company I regularly work with received an inquiry from “John Hartman” and referred me. I replied a week or two ago and received that exact email at the top of the post this morning. Thankfully, I found it all pretty sketchy and did some research. People that do this are scum.
Here’s the email I sent in response:
“Hey “John” !
Please mail the check to:
Cool Scam You Fucking Scumbag, LLC
1234 You Should At Least Stop Using the EXACT SAME Email Copy Every Time Boulevard,
EatMyFuckingShitVille, AK 42069
Now just send over too much money “on accident” or because the “project consultant” is “unable to accept check or PayPal” from you and then I’ll happily wire the difference to the “project consultant”! Then that money will go to an account that is obviously yours, the original check you sent will inevitably bounce, and I’ll lose whatever amount you’re trying to fleece me for!
Thank you so much for being such a disgusting piece of shit! Hopefully, if there’s any justice in this world, you’ll meet some sort of tragic end like: slowly eaten alive by an alligator in front of a delighted studio audience, ripped in half longways after your arms and legs are tied to a couple of horses taking off in opposite directions, or run over by a steamroller driven by your smiling children! Enjoy Asia!
Love,
Dr. Lickma Bawls III, Esq”
This was extremely helpful and entertaining. Our web designer recently added a contact form like this one and we were thrilled that we got an inquiry pretty quickly. They took a while to respond, but then the red flag went up when I got an almost IDENTICAL email from a different person with a slightly different company name. I had to ask myself, if they’re gonna pay us how could this be a scam? I didn’t get far enough in the conversations because I felt something was off. But who turns down work during COVID, right!? Thank God you have this posted. You saved me some trouble, time and headache. Time to update the Spam filter!!!