"We can't choose our circumstances or what happens to us, but we can certainly choose what we do with it."

Hey guys, welcome back to ONKEN RADIO (formerly NION Radio), the podcast where we explore the body, mind, and soul of the creative entrepreneur. It's my goal to help you take your creativity, business, and life to the next level. I'm so glad you're joining me on this journey!

I’ve got an interesting episode for you all today about a recent experience I went through. Have you ever gotten scammed? If you have, then you know it’s a horrible feeling. When people steal something from you, it makes you feel violated, duped, and just generally terrible inside. It’s easy to blame yourself for letting it happen and wallow in that feeling of guilt and negativity. 

But really, the best thing that you can do for yourself is to learn from the experience. You can take responsibility for it for sure. But instead of beating yourself up about it, it’s better to find the lessons from it all and help others not fall prey to the same thing you did. 

Today, I’m going to be sharing the story of how I got scammed for $4,000 and the lessons I learned from that experience. I don’t want to share this for sympathy or to whine about what I lost. My main goal in sharing this is to warn other artists and especially photographers about what happened so that they can be wary. 

I have already posted this story on Instagram, and thankfully I was able to help another photographer avoid the exact same scam I unfortunately fell for. This just goes to show that good things can be found in even a sucky situation like this. Hopefully sharing my story here can help even more people. 

So let’s dive into the story of how I got scammed for $4,000 and what I learned from it. 

How It All Started: The Setup

First of all, I have been shooting photography professionally for the last 15 years, and I have never run into this type of situation before. It all started when I got an email a few weeks ago from a guy named Michael Beckert, who claimed that he was a writer for W Magazine. This wasn’t strange in itself — writers often have to reach out to find photographers for their assignments. 

So naturally, I didn’t think anything of it as “Michael Beckert” proceeded to tell me that he found my work on workbook.com, a well-known and highly esteemed sourcing industry for photographers. He asked me if I would do a shoot for the magazine and sent me links to specific editorials on wmagzine.com with inspiration images and talent suggestions for the shoot. 

Of course, I was thrilled to accept the job. W Magazine is a huge magazine, and I was excited to get my foot in the door there. So I proceeded to set up the shoot with him via email correspondence. 

Michael told me that they had chosen to work with a talent agency called MXtalent.com. When I tried to access the website, the domain wasn’t working, but he informed me that it was under maintenance. This happens a lot, so I thought nothing of it. 

As we continued emailing, Michael informed me that the talent agency would be providing transport, food, refreshments, etc. Because of this, they would need the money advanced to them. Although this might seem sketchy in another context, it’s totally normal in this line of work. As a photographer, I often get an advance from my client and then pay the production expenses upfront. 

I told Michael that I needed the payment check in hand before I could front the amount of money he was asking for. In response, they sent me a check. To be cautious, I asked my assistant to come to my office and verify the check had arrived because I was traveling for work. Sure enough, he sent me photos of the check to ease my mind. 

Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to deposit the check and make sure it cleared before I fronted the money. But since I had it in hand, I figured it would be okay due to the timing of our shoot. We were definitely under the pressure of a short ...