Another day, another way to use AI to scam people.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Megan McCarty Carrino.

AI has ushered in a golden age for scams. There are the deep fake kidnapping calls, the vibe-coded

e-commerce websites, and one of the latest, according to a recent article in the Hollywood

reporter, a casting scam targeting aspiring actors.

Labor and media reporter Katie Kilkenny wrote about how this scheme typically unfolds.

One or multiple scammers are impersonating some very high-profile casting directors.

These may not be household names, but in Hollywood, they're very well-known.

So people like Carmen Cuba,

who cast Stranger Things,

or A.V. Kaufman,

who had, I think,

two Oscar-nominated movies last year.

And they are reaching out to actors,

often folks who are early in their careers,

and inviting them to audition for a major role. And so they put

them through a very, I wouldn't say complex, but it's a multi-step audition process. Eventually,

the actors, quote unquote, get the role. And then they are asked for money in the form of some

sort of fee or a union initiation payment. And so

sometimes they are introduced to a fake union representative as well. And that's kind of how this whole

thing works. So it sounds like this is sort of happening generally in a pretty low tech way over

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