[HN Gopher] An elaborate con that tricked dozens into working fo...
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An elaborate con that tricked dozens into working for a fake design
agency
Author : bhartzer
Score : 190 points
Date : 2022-02-21 18:14 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| The lack of minimum wage is a bit of a giveaway, no one should be
| taking a job that doesn't at least meet that minimum legal
| requirement its clearly illegal without one.
| ilikeitdark wrote:
| A similar thing actually happened to me, by a friend of a friend
| (although we lived in different countries). He was making an
| adult film that was supposed to be for a big platform. Hired
| everyone (including some big names), rented condos, film
| equipment, paid for flights (convinced a producer to front the
| money for some of it). At the end of the week long shoot he tried
| disappearing without paying for anything or anyone. And there was
| no platform involved, it was all made up. And my life was
| threatened by a few of the people he had "hired" because they
| thought I knew the guy (although I really didn't and he ripped me
| off too). This guy Ali sounds like the same kinda psychopath.
| system2 wrote:
| Why does this surprise anyone? These companies exist in LA
| everywhere. Checkout
|
| https://coalitiontechnologies.com/who-we-are
|
| None of the cartoon characters are real humans, no portfolio, no
| bio, just a name (not even a damn last name) and a "business
| title". They hire free people from craigslist and "interview"
| them on YouTube:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=coalition+techn...
|
| They hire people, promise the same things. They quit after a week
| or so. They make companies sign ridiculous contracts and never
| deliver either.
|
| Ali is not guilty, marketing is purely scam these days, he is
| just following the trend.
| Hokusai wrote:
| > Ali is not guilty, marketing is purely scam these days, he is
| just following the trend.
|
| Following criminals is not a valid justification in front of a
| jury. Crime is a common occurrence, it does not make it not
| crime. Everybody is the same is just an excuse for criminals to
| not feel guilty about their acts.
| kahrl wrote:
| "BUT EVERYBODY ELSE WAS DOING IT!" - 6 year old me.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| There is legal precedent for this, at least in Australia.
|
| If you are fired for doing something wrong that others are
| also doing (and they're not fired for it), you have a case
| for an unfair dismissal suit [1].
|
| I'm sure it applies elsewhere too.
|
| [1] IANAL
| [deleted]
| system2 wrote:
| True, I am of course not supporting Ali, but singling him out
| as if he created a scheme on his own is wrong. I can easily
| bet my one month salary on 99% of marketing companies out
| there doing the same.
|
| I know it from personal experience because I had to work with
| many from Los Angeles thru my clients. All deception and
| lies.
|
| Ali said 6 months commission and no client signed. Does he
| owe money? No. Did he lie? Yes, because he created fake
| profiles and lied about his resume as well as his company
| portfolio. Every marketing company does the same without an
| exception.
| gkoberger wrote:
| I mean, that's a bet I'll take. Everyone exaggerates a bit,
| but there's no way you really believe 99 out of 100
| marketing companies are making up fake coworkers and flat-
| out lying about their entire portfolio.
| system2 wrote:
| Probably a little exaggerated, make it 90%. Maybe top 1%
| is doing it right. Small / medium marketing companies are
| not telling the truth ever. Show me some marketing
| companies and I can spot their lies within minutes for
| you. I am very used to it.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| You are exaggerating.. but not too far off. Having
| experience with small marketing agencies (which are very
| often actually just one dude), the amount of "creativity"
| in their "strategies" is insane, and probably criminal.
| And yes, they all claim everybody else is doing it too.
| hammock wrote:
| You are getting downvoted to pieces, but working in the
| industry myself you are closer to the truth than others
| want to believe.
| bsedlm wrote:
| He fooled a whole bunch of people, just because lots of other
| people are going around scamming anybody they can does not in
| any way make any of them any less guilty.
| system2 wrote:
| I think I should write sarcasm with big letters before
| posting anything on an online platform.
| bsedlm wrote:
| you can also use a "/sarcasm" closing tag
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Actually, that Coalition Technologies company was
| interesting. Maybe the summation line was a bit over-the
| top.
|
| Yeah, the Web has allowed shops that used to be no more
| than kiosks in the corridors of a dying mall, to front like
| they are megacorps.
|
| Nothing new (as was pointed out), but it's a lot easier to
| do, these days, than it used to be.
|
| This guy probably could have pulled it off, if he had kept
| his scope small.
|
| That's what tends to kill a lot of cons; they get too big,
| where they allow themselves to be put into a "put up or
| shut up" situation.
|
| Sort of reminds me of the movie _The Producers_.
|
| I often read about successful companies that started off as
| spit-and-baling-wire facades.
| gkoberger wrote:
| > Ali is not guilty, marketing is purely scam these days, he is
| just following the trend.
|
| Having generic stock art on your about page isn't great, but
| it's a fine line.
|
| Making up coworkers, stealing work and saying it's your own,
| not paying people, etc. That's not "marketing", and I really
| hope you don't believe that.
| hammock wrote:
| Employee numbers are routinely inflated and employee pages on
| websites etc are "forgotten to be updated" during downturns.
|
| Stealing work is a routinely done by marketing agencies and
| their employees.. directly and indirectly (look up the real
| Allstate Mayhem story if you can find it- it was originally
| pitched to a different insurance company, not used, ripped
| off and the new agency that "created" it won't actually allow
| Allstate to do any Mayhem work with any other agency by
| contract - which is an unprecedented stipulation (typically
| agency work rights are reserved by the client).
|
| As for not paying people, there is a reason "fuck you pay me"
| is a thing.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That reminds me of Mike Monteiro's famous Meetup talk:
| https://vimeo.com/22053820
| convolvatron wrote:
| the first business venture i worked for had a theatre for
| giving presentations. on the wall of the theater was a 20
| story building, all mirrored glass, framed against the sky
| with the company logo. it looked a little different than the
| two story Mountain View industrial park build we were in.
|
| was that fraud? not really. was that marketing? it certainly
| was. but it was clearly a lie. was that just a question of
| degree?
| kkjjkgjjgg wrote:
| Why do they exist? In the hopes that eventually it could work?
| sireat wrote:
| What I do not understand how could an enterprise be so
| incompetent not to attract any clients in 6 months?
|
| You have 20-30 very motivated sales people working on landing
| clients for 6 months, there have to be some sales.
|
| Or did this not-quite an agency actually land some real clients
| and was unable to deliver?
| itronitron wrote:
| I doubt the agency landed any real clients as the companies Ali
| claimed to have access to through personal connections and past
| experience likely stick with vetted design agencies and
| probably have fairly extensive contract procedures. If Ali had
| focused on low to mid-tier clients they may have been able to
| land some contracts, my two cents.
| zauguin wrote:
| I would expect that the sales people did focus on mid-tier
| clients. After all, if they would have approached high-tier
| clients Ali supposedly had connections with I would expect
| the responses to show that this isn't real.
| SkipperCat wrote:
| This is so similar to the Anna Sorokin scam (now famous via
| Netflix). I think the Insta culture has made people so hungry for
| the image of success that they'll do anything to achieve it.
|
| Taking that a step further, I do wonder if crimes like this will
| get public sentiment behind removing anonymity from the Internet.
| There's plenty of reasons to keep people's privacy. But society
| will only tolerate so much criminal behavior before handing over
| their freedom for order.
| blowski wrote:
| Such scams have always been true for whatever reason. Ancient
| Rome had specific laws around pretending to be other people,
| suggesting it was a big problem 2000 years ago. If this is used
| to justify removing anonymity from the internet, I doubt it
| will be the real motivation for those pushing it.
| tmnvix wrote:
| God forbid the public see the anonymous nature of business
| entities as the problem here - at least when seeking justice.
|
| > The tribunal order was made against the company, not against
| Ali Ayad as an individual. So if Madbird was insolvent, like
| Ali said, there was no way the tribunal could force it to pay
| any of the owed wages.
| autoexec wrote:
| Exactly, corporations keep telling us they are people, but
| somehow they never face the kinds of consequences that actual
| people do. That said, I'd be surprised if there wasn't
| something Ali Ayad could be charged with directly.
| bsder wrote:
| That doesn't fly in California. Back wages are one of the few
| things that officers of a company can be found personally
| liable for.
| shakna wrote:
| > But society will only tolerate so much criminal behavior
| before handing over their freedom for order.
|
| There's already movement to remove this [0], whether or not
| it's approved by the public, and whether or not it's deemed to
| actually be helpful at all by the experts in the field.
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
| news/2021/nov/28/coali...
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _so hungry for the image of success that they 'll do anything
| to achieve it_
|
| I'd flip that sideways a bit and say that it's normalized the
| achievement of success (that is, the end rewards) to consumers
| / viewers, while omitting the effort to get there, to such a
| degree that no one thinks to look for or ask "How?"
|
| Everything in the BBC article was pretty trivially verifiable.
| But most people didn't. That feels wrong.
| nerdawson wrote:
| > Everything in the BBC article was pretty trivially
| verifiable. But most people didn't. That feels wrong.
|
| 90k Instagram followers is all the verification most people
| need.
| bunana wrote:
| > Everything in the BBC article was pretty trivially
| verifiable. But most people didn't. That feels wrong.
|
| I'm shocked that apparently no one looked up the supposed
| Madbird office (edit: except for Gemma, who had been working
| there already for two weeks!). Has covid really made people
| so comfortable working at home to the point where they don't
| care to know where their employer's physical office is?
| Especially for the people who were "hired" abroad. In my
| mind, I would be extra careful to audit a potential employer
| if they're based in a different country than where I live.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| To be blunt to people who were swindled were either dumb or
| naieve.
|
| they learned a valuable lesson.
|
| I'm not sure if we need to put safety guards on every possible
| bad thing that can happen in the world
| [deleted]
| gkoberger wrote:
| The Tinder Swindler on Netflix is another example of this.
| Theranos isn't far off, either, although it was more
| "legitimate".
|
| I disagree with your last paragraph, though. These weren't
| "anonymous" people, they were liars (often using their real
| identities and definitely using their real faces). There have
| been con artists for decades.
|
| These people aren't trying to steal money and sneak off into
| the darkness. They're trying to brute force their way into
| their version of success, where their actual real identities
| are attached.
| lazide wrote:
| Fake it until you make it is incredibly toxic for everyone -
| it gets people in over their heads in situations they have no
| experience for, it convinces folks to scam everyone around
| them, and it causes mental health issues for everyone as they
| can't figure out if they should be more or less delusional
| than others.
|
| It's about time for some actual 'experience and
| responsibility matter' to come back - but it will have to get
| worse before it gets better, and hopefully we don't get stuck
| in the 'scam zone'
| beaconstudios wrote:
| This is just the extreme end of "fake it till you make it" hustle
| culture that's also extremely prevalent in startup culture.
| Presumably this guy thought "I'll hire a bunch of people for free
| then we'll get contracts then I'll have the money to pay them
| (assuming I don't run off with the money)".
|
| Somewhat related, one of the things that made me stop freelancing
| online when I was a teenager was the number of people who upon
| job completion would ask me to wait until they had the money to
| pay, or try to get out of paying entirely.
| subpixel wrote:
| I had a company try to get net 60 terms _for a deposit_. That
| was the last time we spoke.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| That rather defeats the purpose of a deposit!
| hammock wrote:
| People are jumping to conclusions that this was some sort of
| criminal enterprise. The article makes no claims of criminal
| activity. There are clearly fibs - none though that are
| particularly unique in the design agency world. Perhaps there
| is some actual criminal fraud here, but the case is not laid
| out specifically.
|
| The fact is all these "jobfished" people signed up willingly
| for a job that was purely commission-based, and had the agency
| actually been able to attract a paying client in the first six
| months, who is to say Ali wouldn't have made good on his
| promises to hire people on salary, etc.?
|
| I know I'm going to be downvoted for this comment, but I wanted
| to lay out a contrarian point of view that doesn't just
| immediately jump on the bandwagon of the current Anna
| Sorokin/Tinder Swindler zeitgeist.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| It's more complicated than just "did he commit crime" (which
| he did, in terms of employment - you can't pay people PS0 for
| full time work in the UK). His actions were fraudulent in
| terms of faking so many aspects of the company and his own
| profile, and he misled people by guaranteeing an income at
| the end of the probation. He was both criminal and
| manipulative but I'm sure in his mind he was just working on
| his grindset or whatever excuse internet hustlers use for
| ripping people off these days.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| The problem here is there is no difference to the victim.
| They were promised money the hiring party did not have and
| did not deliver. From the worker's viewpoint, they've been
| cheated of their wages regardless of intent.
| hammock wrote:
| What money were they promised? The article I read said they
| were hired on commission and zero clients were won.
| awb wrote:
| > There are clearly fibs - none though that are particularly
| unique in the design agency world
|
| I ran a legit design agency and none of this is common. And
| it goes well beyond a fib.
|
| * Stealing portfolio samples (copyright infringement / IP
| theft & fraud)
|
| * Creating fake employee profiles and potentially
| impersonating these fake employees (fraud)
|
| * Hiring people on a $0 base salary (illegal hiring practice)
|
| At best he didn't know he was breaking the law, at the worst
| he was.
| CPLX wrote:
| It almost certainly meets the test for fraud. In the UK
| that's defined as making a dishonest representation for your
| own advantage or to cause another a loss. Hard to see how
| this doesn't squarely fit that description.
| hammock wrote:
| Why, then, do you think the word "fraud" appears nowhere in
| the article?
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Journalists will, as a rule, not make explicit
| accusations that could bring libel/defamation suits.
| hammock wrote:
| Isn't this reasoning what the word "alleged" is for? Also
| not found in the article.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Not if allegations have not yet been raised.
|
| You seem very hung up on the wording of this article. Is
| fraud not a crime unless it's called out by a journalist?
| ceres wrote:
| Because the BBC is a media company not a law firm or
| court of law. Maybe because he hasn't been charged
| ...yet. In any case you shouldn't decide the innocence or
| guilt of someone based on a news article.
| rwmj wrote:
| Just a lawyer at the BBC being cautious about attracting
| an unnecessary lawsuit.
| ellen364 wrote:
| The company probably broke minimum wage law. And might owe
| employer's national insurance contributions to HMRC (the tax
| office). That might sound strange because the employees
| weren't paid. But if the company was legally obliged to pay
| minimum wage, I'd guess they were also legally obliged to pay
| employer taxes.
|
| Having said that, the article noted that HMRC's minimum wage
| enforcement team have already been involved and recovered
| just PS29.70. Hopefully they're still working on it.
|
| Edit: An employment tribunal ruled that three employees are
| collectively owed PS19,000, so minimum wage is somewhat being
| enforced. But the company doesn't have any money to pay them.
| It's a mess.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Luring people to work for you under false pretenses should be
| considered criminal fraud. They gave up other jobs and
| opportunities for this one. It directly impacted their
| economic security.
|
| If you put fake executives into an investment document with
| fake work samples and fake client claims, that would
| definitely be considered criminal fraud.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Agreed re the cultural phenomenon. I think one of the things
| that makes people vulnerable to this is that it's hard to "ask
| for the sale" and by extension, to ask for payment ahead of
| time, or even on time, when you're starting out.
|
| Most of us have this inner sense of "How dare I?" ask for
| money. Even when it's earned and perfectly honest or in direct
| payment for your directly contributed labor.
|
| This is what makes raising money hard and it's what makes sales
| hard. And it is what allows people like this to take advantage
| of those who work hard without paying them for a surprisingly
| long time.
| api wrote:
| Why isn't this a crime? Isn't it the wage theft equivalent of
| check kiting?
| beaconstudios wrote:
| This is a crime. The only real question is whether Ali will
| get prosecuted - which, given that he defrauded employees
| rather than investors, I rather doubt.
| lazide wrote:
| It probably is a crime, and maybe it will get looked into due
| to this article. It is weird the article is being so
| circumspect about it.
| chrisma0 wrote:
| That first instagram photo of Ali has almost a surreal nature to
| it. Is it just me or did they somehow photoshop his features to
| be smaller and his face bigger?!
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| A fair few people acting as if this is a new thing, but I'm not
| so sure. I had a few old coworkers talk about crazy shit like
| this that happened in the 90s/00s.
| duxup wrote:
| > But when we got hold of the GQ issue and opened it to page 63,
| the photo of Ali wasn't there. It was an advert for a watch. Ali
| Ayad had never modelled for Massimo Dutti, and he had never been
| featured in British GQ.
|
| That's an impressive level of detail, faking a magazine ad.
| itronitron wrote:
| I'm hoping someone can do a photoshop analysis of the first
| picture of Ali in the article (the one in the cafe). The
| proportions in the face seemed a bit off and rather dissimilar
| to the image from the video interview.
| muzani wrote:
| That's why he had to work 17 hours/day.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Is it just about inserting a sheet of paper with a good quality
| photo at page 63?
| duxup wrote:
| Good photo on paper that looks convincing (or good
| photoshopping).
|
| Either way that's an interesting effort.
| matsemann wrote:
| If photoshop it's quite good, not immediately obvious using
| image forensic tools. So maybe became quite a good designer
| after making all those fake stuff..? Hehe.
|
| Reminds me of kids trying to cheat a test by writing down
| all answers, only to not have to use that cheat sheet
| because they ended up accidentally studying for the test by
| making the sheet.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It's quite near the production values of a real fashion ad.
| Definitely shot by someone with experience and some skill -
| probably another victim.
|
| Given the styling and the obsession with appearances, I'd
| guess this character is a plain old narcissist. His only
| real skill is superficial charm. There's no real business
| ability there, or even much serious interest in running a
| real business.
|
| But being seen to be a CEO and thought leader - _that_ will
| appeal to him.
|
| It's exactly the kind of love bombing -> charm -> attention
| seeking -> future faking -> increasingly outrageous lies ->
| reality of outright abuse sequence you'd expect.
|
| My guess is he lacks any remorse, because he's likely
| incapable of it. And he'll be lining up some more victims
| in some other scheme.
|
| A lot of this is unquestionably criminal and illegal, but
| it's hard to get the police interested in a case like this.
| And even if the victims group together and take him to
| small claims he'll find some way not to pay them.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| Isn't superficial charm business ability. And the company
| was close to being successful no?
|
| Like if I were a couple of tech founders in YC I'd be
| trying to get this guy to be my CEO.
| llamataboot wrote:
| Perhaps that's a comment on the current state of
| "business" and funding and not quite the endorsement you
| make it out to be
| itronitron wrote:
| I look forward to his TED talk.
| janekm wrote:
| I imagine he paid (or, perhaps, didn't pay) a photoshop artist
| on fiver...
| hammock wrote:
| Clever for sure. Or, just another fake/photoshopped Instagram
| post of millions.
| 0898 wrote:
| The article is a bit laboured. "This profile photo wasn't real.
| And this profile wasn't real. And the company wasn't real! And
| the pitch documents were stolen!"
|
| We get it - it was a fake company.
| Traster wrote:
| The BBC is not a top tier organisation for original reporting.
| Just a couple of weeks ago they basically got taken in by a
| crypto-bro who claimed to have made millions (what he didn't
| claim was that he made those millions by scamming people). They
| published a teaser article in the morning to boost their
| exclusive report on TV in the evening. Basically an hour after
| posting the teaser article they got called out on their
| naivete, and pulled the tv programme. citation:
| https://www.cityam.com/bbc-pulls-crypto-documentary-amid-sca...
| arrakis2021 wrote:
| You're right it reads like it's trying to be the next Theranos
| expose
| arcastroe wrote:
| Sorry if I missed it, but we're there any criminal charges filed?
| Or was all of this legal?
| rwmj wrote:
| The UK police have essentially given up on fraud[1]. The amount
| of fraud and scams going on here at the moment is incredible.
| It would be expensive and difficult for the individual
| contractors to sue him, I expect most of them have "moved on".
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/feb/20/online-
| victim-... quote: Fraud now makes up 42% of all crime and only
| one in 700 fraud cases resulted in a conviction in 2019.
| well_i_guess wrote:
| Is this the effect that we're better aware of fraud and the
| like or is it that society is increasingly failing to
| prosecute crime? I feel as though we're in a strange spiral
| where criminality is increasingly forgiven even in cases it
| shouldn't be due to the ineptitude of government. I've talked
| to many, many people who are of the view that society is no
| longer just, not because of undue prosecution, but because of
| no prosecution.
|
| I'll admit, I was swayed by the arguments of certain protests
| a couple years ago, but it seems like a deeper law/order
| reaction is brewing after the downstream effects of the
| policies and attitudes have come into play.
| rwmj wrote:
| There's no mystery about it, the UK government has
| aggressively cut funding to the police and criminal justice
| system. https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/def
| ault/file...
| awb wrote:
| The article implies that the scam never made any money which is
| perhaps just as shocking as the con itself.
|
| I ran a real web agency and clients almost never asked for
| references and were happy to pay up to 50% of a 5-figure project
| total upfront to get started, even from remote or overseas
| clients that I never met in person who found me through SEO.
|
| Crazy that they couldn't land even 1 contract with whatever
| stolen portfolio examples they desired.
| desireco42 wrote:
| It is really weird that they didn't start making a ton of money
| from all the energy and work people did. This guy must be some
| kind of sociopath to do this to people, it was easy to make
| this work even if it started as a scam.
| itronitron wrote:
| Very weird to hire people to do work, and especially convincing
| them to leave their current job, when you don't have any work
| that needs to be done.
|
| Having said that, a variant of this type of behavior is not
| uncommon in large organizations where 'go-getters' can self-
| manifest by creating chatter and finding underlings. But in
| that case there is already a revenue flow to support time and
| attention.
| hammock wrote:
| >Very weird to hire people to do work, and especially
| convincing them to leave their current job, when you don't
| have any work that needs to be done.
|
| Spec work and pitch work are very much a thing. As
| counterintuitive or infuriating as it may seem, having no
| paying clients doesn't mean there is no work to be done, in
| the agency world.
| smcl wrote:
| I read this story when I woke up earlier today so I was a
| little bleary-eyed and may have missed something, but I don't
| know how accurate that is. We know people didn't get _paid_ but
| idk if we can be certain the company didn 't get any money
| whatsoever.
| awb wrote:
| I based the assumption off of this anecdote:
|
| > But no deals were ever finalised. By February 2021, not a
| single client contract had been signed.
| smorgusofborg wrote:
| Yeah, but there's no reason to think some weren't stacking
| up on his desk and managing an agency successfully working
| average contracts wasn't what he was after.
| awb wrote:
| Right, but the point remains that the company made no
| money. It's a lot of effort to do what he did and to not
| sign 1 contract especially as employee's 6mo paychecks
| were coming up is still surprising to me.
| smcl wrote:
| So I read this too but it sounded like it was based on
| accounts from employees BBC could get hold of. I guess
| it's possible it's true but I find it hard to believe
| such a business could exist for a couple of months with
| absolutely no sales whatsoever.
| alx__ wrote:
| Yeah I'm having a hard time believing it wasn't about money.
| Maybe he was already decently wealthy and just wanted to role
| play as a successful creative director?
|
| For the folks who got tricked I feel bad for them. That's a
| rough way to learn the lesson to be very suspicious of
| commission based work. It's usually a losing situation
| lordnacho wrote:
| The article says they hired sales people as well. Maybe that
| was the plan? Use "credit" to get the product and the buyers,
| ball gets rolling, zero to one done.
|
| But it seems a bit nuts too. It actually takes effort to run a
| business with a bunch of people, and more if you have to
| remember all the lies you told each person.
|
| Perhaps what it really says is that success appears so
| superficial these days, a random chancer thought he was close
| enough to having all the pieces that he gave it a shot. It's
| only a few steps away from "this equity will be worth a million
| in 4 years".
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