<story><title>An elaborate con that tricked dozens into working for a fake design agency</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-60387324</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>awb</author><text>The article implies that the scam never made any money which is perhaps just as shocking as the con itself.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;Crazy that they couldn’t land even 1 contract with whatever stolen portfolio examples they desired.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lordnacho</author><text>The article says they hired sales people as well. Maybe that was the plan? Use &amp;quot;credit&amp;quot; to get the product and the buyers, ball gets rolling, zero to one done.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;s only a few steps away from &amp;quot;this equity will be worth a million in 4 years&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>An elaborate con that tricked dozens into working for a fake design agency</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-60387324</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>awb</author><text>The article implies that the scam never made any money which is perhaps just as shocking as the con itself.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;Crazy that they couldn’t land even 1 contract with whatever stolen portfolio examples they desired.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>itronitron</author><text>Very weird to hire people to do work, and especially convincing them to leave their current job, when you don&amp;#x27;t have any work that needs to be done.&lt;p&gt;Having said that, a variant of this type of behavior is not uncommon in large organizations where &amp;#x27;go-getters&amp;#x27; can self-manifest by creating chatter and finding underlings. But in that case there is already a revenue flow to support time and attention.</text></comment>