A warning to all Voiceover Artists!

Arm yourself against the Game Show Voiceover Scam

The Game Show Voiceover Scam has become so well known that seasoned voiceover artists now consider receiving the scam email a rite of passage. Despite it’s prevalence I have managed to never receive the regularly circulated trap containing a promise of work. I see much celebration and joking when people in the know receive this email. Like they’ve finally levelled up in the industry. It’s become a bit of an in-joke. But it’s no joke to the people that fall prey to it.

If you belong to any voiceover groups on Facebook, a quick search on the phrase Game Show Voiceover Scam will uncover plenty of past discussions.  Please familiarise yourself with the scam’s many iterations. You’ll probably even come across some unfortunate instances where people were successfully stung.

Ever Evolving

The scam has been around for eons and has morphed over time.  There are several versions of it doing the rounds – but at the core they are all the same. The scammers target people directly with email, and they also set their traps on freelancing or casting sites. They have even started to send text messages.

As the scam evolves to try to outsmart people’s vigilance more effort is being made to try to appear legitimate. They might customise their attempt and mention a voice talent that their potential victim knows, saying this person recommended them. (You only need to look at someone’s social media connections and the activity on some of their recent posts to get a name that would work.) They might even pose as a studio or production company that actually exists.

New voice talents enter the market every day, so the industry is constantly furnished with a fresh supply of potential unsuspecting scam victims. It’s up to anyone who knows about this scam to continue to spread the word to help keep others safe.

How to spot a voiceover scam

Here’s how it goes, more or less:

Scammers originally ran this scam by “hiring” talent to record at “a local studio,” only revealing the location “closer to the date of the recording.” They sent the talent a cheque covering both their fee and the studio hire. Sometimes, they claimed to have “accidentally overpaid” the talent. Then, they pressured the talent to “repay” the overpayment to the scammer or forward the excess amount to the “producer” or “studio manager.”

Surprise, surprise – the cheque ends up bouncing, and by the time it does, the talent has already paid the other party.

Of course, with the rise of the home studio, the con-artists behind the Game Show Voiceover Scam have had to make some changes. So, when a remote voice talent is targeted, there will be a need to “purchase specific pieces of equipment” in order to complete the recording. A cheque is then sent in order to facilitate that purchase, but the overpayment part of the scam remains the same.

Alternative Traps

Here in Australia, cheques are on the endangered species list. But if you’ve ever tried to sell an item on Facebook Marketplace, you might be aware of some other pretty simple tricks that scammers use to fleece people of their money. Have a quick google of the ‘Facebook PayID scam”. It’s the same overpayment/reimbursement scheme, and the perfect way to try to rip off an unsuspecting Aussie who might immediately be suss the moment a cheque payment is suggested.

It’s astounding how long this scam has been running. Plenty of people have already written articles or made YouTube videos about it.  But people still fall victim to it because they haven’t come across any of these warnings.

And that is why Voiceover artists can never have enough discussion around this. You can never ‘overshare’ it. There can never be too many articles or videos about it.

We don’t know what we don’t know.

And if we do know, then we shouldn’t assume that everyone else does too.

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