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Jobfishing - The fake design agency that catfished 52 creatives

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Everyone loves a good con story. You only have to see the success of the recent Anna Sorokin drama and Tinder Swindler documentary on Netflix to see how infatuated we all are with the seedy inner-workings of a good long con. But the latest big con job to catch headline attention hits a little closer to home for many of us.

Last night, BBC Three aired a documentary called “Jobfished” which told the very real story of a very fake company that conned dozens of people. Not out of their money and not out of their self-respect but out of something far more sacred - their time and effort.

Mad birds and bad birds

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The last few years has stoked a furnace of opportunity for remote workers. Because of the pandemic, millions of us have started new jobs working for people we might never meet face-to-face from the comfort of our own homes. But what if those people you were emailing back and forth with were not the people you thought they were? 

No doubt you’ll have seen (or at least been aware of) the MTV series Catfish, in which a team of investigators track down the truth behind fake online romances but what if that kind of con was pulled on a much larger scale? That’s essentially what happened with the ‘design agency’ Madbird.

Playing the long con

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Madbird is a concept dreamt up by so-called ‘influencer’ Ali Ayad. Like Anna Sorokin/Delvey before him, Ayad sold his personal brand on aspiration and wealth. He was a former model and former creative director at Nike with numerous University degrees and a “Tom Cruise” vibe. Or was he? No, of course not. He didn’t even exist. Not really.

He carefully cultivated the kind of persona that he knew would attract young creatives and set up a front for a design agency that looked, on the surface, to be a trendy and alluring proposition. The creatives who were duped into working for him were not naive, they were drawn in by a larger-than-life personality that was all stardust and no substance.

He conjured up fake co-founders and clients, chaired zoom calls rife with muted microphones and suspiciously fuzzy camera feeds and duped his ‘employees’ into six months of commission-only work for a roster of high-profile clients.

In all, Ayad managed to con 52 creatives into working for an agency that didn’t exist and, having seen the documentary, I can honestly appreciate why. He was a charming natural leader who espoused great minds like Steve Jobs as his influences and waxed lyrical about the impact of Black Lives Matter. He also talked a great deal about a phrase that’s always irked me - hustle.

Hustle culture

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Popularised by the hip-hop world as a concept that means essentially doing anything possible to “make it,” the idea of hustle is one that seems perfectly tailored to the creative industries. Many of us, after all, are living from job to job, particularly in the wake of the pandemic.

But the willingness to “do anything” to make it is not, in my eyes, a trait that should be idealised. It’s one that should be vilified. The romanticised image of the “hustler” is arguably what’s led us to this point - a point where it’s perfectly possible for a man to create a glistening shell of a company so bright and sparkly it attracts and exploits top talent. 

It wasn’t until many of the creatives involved had racked up thousands of pounds in debt while they waited for a paycheque that would never come that the truth was revealed. An exhaustive email was circulated exposing the truth behind Madbird: All of the work was stolen from other people and other agencies (the small London-based design agency Hatched most notably). The headquarters in Kensington didn’t exist and many of the employees were just an amalgamation of stock photos and random bios.

Don’t trust the hustle

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If you’ve ever walked the streets of a major tourist city and had someone waltz up to you pretending to be your friend before they aggressively reveal they want something from you, then you’ve been hustled. Don’t be fooled by the gloss. All Ali Ayad was selling was the same old shit dipped in glue and rolled in glitter.

The takeaway here for creatives, particularly freelancers, is to ALWAYS question your clients and your employers. If something seems suspect then follow up on it and do your due diligence. The remote work explosion has created a vacuum that plenty of nefarious agents out there will be more than happy to fill with more noise and bluster.

Of course, in a world where so many agencies exist solely online, it’s that much harder to sort the real from the pretend. But keep your eyes open and your suspicions rife. If somebody refuses to appear on a video conference or a phone call, if you’ve been chasing invoices for months or if your creative spidey sense starts tingling then don’t be afraid to investigate further. 

And never trust a hustler. Because they’re not worth your time and they’re definitely not worth your talent.

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