Scam Warning: "Exciting UGC Opportunity" emails from carlynelson772@gmail.com

Obviously, this is a throwaway. I was contacted by the email above with the header "Exciting UGC Opportunity"." They had reached out multiple times regarding UGC gigs, but they all paid too little for me to be interested. They finally had offered one that was high paid enough, so I engaged with them. They sent me product for a brand called "Drift," and I shot footage of the product for a few videos. The shot list was horrible but so are most shot lists I get, so I thought nothing of it. When it came time for delivery, they even asked for a reshoot of something they didn't outline in the brief. It wasn't until they brought up payment that I knew something was wrong. They said that because they were in a country that they couldn't access their PayPal, the client would send me an amount of money higher than my fee. I would then have to send the scammer their "project coordinator fee" and I would keep the rest.

This is a classic PayPal scam where they would send this money from a fraudulent PayPal, the money would then be refunded out of my own account and they would make off with their small portion. It's the dumbest scam I've ever seen, way too much effort for what they would have actually made had I fallen for that portion. They did get my W9, however, so I've taken precautions that I will not outline publicly to make my information useless. I also contacted the real "Carly Nelson" and informed them that their picture was being used for this fake email account and that their website had a shitty clone as well. It's on them to do with that information what they will. I've reached out to the brand, which it seems their product was legitimately purchased from what I can tell, to let them know. And I've filed this with the FBI as well as other agencies and companies. The only thing I lost was my time, and they made a fake email account using my name and likeness. I've posted that in other places to make it very easy to search should they try to use it, but I'm hoping I've done enough to that fake email address to let them know that they've been burned. I'm going to post this on other subreddits to try and make sure this person isn't able to continue to scam people the same way.

Should someone contact you as a "project coordinator" or "UGC agency" either 1. Don't engage, the real ones are scammers in their own right, or

2. Give them a full background check with the kind of scrutiny that would make Sherlock Holmes flinch.