Morning Folks,
A bit of Drama and Action have been happening lately because of a bit of misunderstanding that occurred on the Voiceover front.
In case you are not yet aware of it, Taji’s Voice Emporium has a section dedicated to listing Scam Artists that Voiceover talent worldwide have had bad experiences with.
The Biggest scammers so far are a casting agency in India called VoxBox run by Melroy D’Mello, Michelle D’Mello and Shawn Pereira.
These people have taken the fact that they are based in India as protection from any litigation that might come their way and have scammed several artists out of their hard earned cash.
Wait. It gets worse.
There is another company called “The Vox Box” based out of Montreal Canada and they have been getting the backlash of what the Indians have been doing. There is a whole page dedicated to the emails sent by people who have been swindled by VoxBox india in the Scam-Alert section… if these people have ripped you off.. please leave your story.
Here are the two completely different companies’ websites:
http://www.voxbox.in/ (scammers)
http://www.thevoxbox.com/ (not scammers)
Lori (owner and operator at the Canadian company) recently got back to me that an overzealous vo talent (without mentioning names) has started contacting her clients and warning them of VoxBox’s practices. Although this Vigilante action is to a degree commendable.
It kind of falls on it’s face once you realize that you are targeting the wrong company.
In fact the reason why it’s harder for a company in North America to get away with what VoxBox has been doing to their victims is that they are in North America. Which means that there are several organizations that you can go to like the Better Business Bureau, or the Claims court or even the cops to report any con artist.
But since these scammers are in India they believe they are unreachable.
Things You Can Do
But I think otherwise. I think if you want to get these people you should do one of a number of things:
- Contact their hosting company and report them as scam artists and get their website taken offline
- Contact paypal and get their account suspended and all their names blacklisted
- Contact all the online marketplaces and inform them that these people should not be allowed to post jobs (they’ve been banned from all the known ones so far)
- Contact LinkedIn and report Melroy D’Mello, Michelle D’Mello and Shawn Pereira and get their profiles taken down (their profiles are still up so you can contact them if you like).
- Melroy’s Telephone number is listed somewhere… give him a call… give him a piece of your mind.
- Warn your friends about them. Block any means for them to rip off anymore innocents.
- Contact Moneybookers, Pay Alert, 2CO etc… all the payment gateways and report these people.
- Contact an indian litigator in the area where Melroy lives… see if it is possible to get a Mass Law Suit against that scammer.
- Conduct searches on his name (and his accomplices) on facebook and report their profiles to facebook.
- What are you waiting for? Go!
Recently they have been also trying to leave job listings on translation sites … if you are involved in translation contact your translation website administrator and get them banned.
Remember
Remember there are 2 different companies… THE VOX BOX (Good folk) … VOXBOX (BAD).
‘Nuff Said
Taji