The Conway Corner

I went to another scam today.

At 7:00 at night, on the 12th floor of 500 8th avenue, I arrive at "One Source Talent" because I received a call from someone who had somehow received my information, and said they may be interested in representing me. I was told I would meet with the office director, Temur, and that my invite number was 34294. They even called in the middle of the day today to confirm I would be coming to meet Temur. The twelfth floor has a hallway with a number of people lining it, waiting outside of suite 1210, with a sign next to the door that says "One Source Talent." In addition to people my age, there a number of mothers there with young children.

Now, I thought this was a scam going into it. I got a funny feeling from the phone call. I am confused by the large number of people, but the sign looks somewhat legitimate, being three dimensional and mildly shiny. A man opens the door and says to line up so we can begin. I wait, then receive a clip board with an application on it from that man. The clipboard was lined up with a pile of clipboards along the front desk of this office, which is a gross pale yellow. I am directed down a hallway, past a strange room containing a children's table and chairs, a room with a man sitting at the desk wearing a black scarf and grinning at me as I walk by, and another little office with a desk, until I get to a large screening area with a TV playing some movie. A woman in the screening area directs me to take a seat along with a number of other people and fill out the form I've been given. I'm hesitant about how much information to give, since I suspect some funny business, but the form asks no more information then you could get from my facebook profile. Below my personal information is a little paragraph, stating that "I, in good faith, am present with the objective of finding representation for myself as an actor/model..." or something weird like that. The 'in good faith' was weird, and there was also a clause at the bottom, saying I "consented to be filmed and/or photographed" during the screening process.

The movie playing in this screening room has the volume blaring, and my hearing is quite poor, so if I thought it was loud it must have been damn loud. I ask the woman if I could turn down the volume and she says, "not now." That's the same tactic the scientologists used when I talked to them in the subway and I asked for them to explain how the 'theaton meter' works. "We can talk about that later," the woman said, moving on to discuss why I need to buy the book Dianetics. There is never a 'later.'

I sign at the end of this paragraph with my real name, but using a different signature then I normally use just to be careful. I hand the clipboard to the woman at the front of the room and sit back down. Now, I know that this is a scam at this point. There is little doubt in my mind. I feel like I'm wasting my time. It was stupid of me to go there in the first place after I suspected something from the phone call. So, I walk up to the woman, who is now joined at her side by the man who had been grinning from the desk in the first office, and I say, "Listen, is this a legitimate thing? If this is a scam, just tell me now and I'll leave, because I'm going to be very angry if I find out that it is." To which she responds, somewhat nervously, but keeping her cool, "no, this is real." After which the grinning man says, "if you aren't comfortable waiting, then just leave now." To which I say "no, I'm fine waiting." He gives me a quite frightening fake smile beyond his standard plastered-on-grin and I return to my seat.

I think about what I can do in this situation. I could yell to this whole room, over the blasting movie, that this is a scam and they should leave now. I could go up to each person and tell them, so the woman at the front does not hear me saying it. But, before I can keep thinking, the woman has already called me next. There were a number of people who had hand in their clipboard a duration before I hand in mine, but apparently I deserved to skip the line. I watched the grinning man walk out of the room I was about to enter, grin at me, and he is followed by a quite young man, of about fourteen, who asks me to come inside. A girl of around seventeen is also in the room, and they ask me to stand against a wall which has measuring tape on it. The boy says, "five feet ten inches," which he writes on my clipboard, and then the girl takes my picture. Then the girl says, "is this phone number the best way to reach you?" "Yes, that should be fine," I say, thinking of what an idiot I am for even putting down my real phone number. Then the boy says, "Okay, we'll be in touch." I walk slowly out of the office, plotting how to deal with the situation. People notice how exceptionally slow I'm walking, and the man who gave me the clipboard at the start asks, "are you alright?" "Yes, I'm fine," I say, actually quite upset. I stroll, still slowly, out of the office, and stand thinking in the hallway for a few minutes. Maybe I should go back in and ask for Temur. Was the grinning man Temur? I showed up fifteen minutes early, did that mean I joined the cattle call group when in fact I should have waited until 7:00 for the time of my appointment? Then I could have really confronted someone about this! Or now, I could still go back to that screening room and start yelling. But, realizing there was nothing logically I could do, because I have no real evidence, I sadly wander to the elevator. A man with a tie arrives next to me waiting by the elevator, and I say to him, "did you think that was a scam?" "What? I work in an office up here," he says confused. Then a well made-up and well dressed girl who looked like she could have been interviewing/auditioning arrives at the elevator. "Did you think that was a scam?" I ask politely. "I work there," she says without smiling. "Oh. Well is it a scam?" I ask with honest accusation dead into her eyes. "No," she says looking at the ground. We ride down the elevator in silence.

I thought of at least twenty clever comments to throw at her, but none of them were really any good because I didn't have much of a basis for seeing this thing as a scam. It has a website, they had that sign out front, and although the office lacked many of the normal decorations of an office there was a feeling about it that was just wrong. There was that strange room with the children's table and chairs that could have been a photography room of some sort. That's what these scams usually do. They say they want you to join up with them and if they are smarter than to just say, "okay, now give us some money to represent you," then they have a more elaborate scheme where they say you need to get a 'comp card' through their photographer in order to start getting work. I went to one of this type of scam before, when I actually got through to a second stage instead of giving myself away as suspicious in the first. Apparently my headshot wasn't good enough, and I needed this other thing. Bullshit, of course.

Anyone know any legal action that can be taken in this sort of situation? Please let me know what you think should be done about this. I intend to keep going to scams until I think of a good way to expose them.

Written by Mitchell Conway