A guy at a Dallas creator meetup showed me the $2,000 'collab fee' email he almost paid

Drew Martin · 2026-10-11T14:15:05.549647+00:00

I was at a small creator meetup in Dallas last Saturday, maybe 30 people in a rented room above a coffee shop on Elm Street. Somebody passed around a laptop during the break because his screen was frozen on this email from a 'global wellness brand' asking him to pay a $2,000 onboarding fee to unlock a 'guaranteed $15k campaign.' Half the room had gotten the same email that week, just with the brand name swapped out. One girl pulled up three versions in her spam folder, same wording, three different logos, all sent from a gmail address with a weird number at the end. We spent the rest of the meetup comparing headers instead of talking about content, and someone figured out the reply-to domain was registered 11 days earlier. I had a similar offer sitting in my inbox and I was two clicks away from sending them my media kit. Does anyone here know a quick way to check if a brand domain is brand new before you even open the email?

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A guy at a Dallas creator meetup showed me the $2,000 'collab fee' email he almost paid | Brand Deal Scams - SMM Buzz