The Fake Headhunters Targeting TV Executives

Jago Lee couldn’t believe his luck when he was contacted by a recruiter last month about a big job at a top London production company.

The British TV and podcast producer had been recommended for the role by a longtime friend and colleague. Lee wasn’t looking, but in a tough job market, it never hurts to hear what’s out there. The recruiter said his experience running three production companies, most recently a successful audio and video podcast business called Telltale, made him a “phenomenal fit.” 

“It really lifted my mood,” says Lee. “The industry is in such a tatty state at the moment, and there was something about being reached out to that made me feel like, hey, I’ve still got it.”

The recruiter said she worked for U.S. talent firm Cielo, and her email signature linked to a legitimate-looking LinkedIn profile. The job was a role as head of nonfiction and executive producer at Curve Media, the company behind  Salvage Hunters. But something about the salary gave him pause. Ranging from £250,000 to £300,000 ($330,000 to $400,000), this was extraordinarily generous compensation, about double what such a job would typically pay. Lee was agog.

“There’s a moment of disbelief where you’re like, maybe I’ve been underpaid all this time,” he says.

Or maybe, as Lee soon discovered, none of it was real.

Lee is among a growing contingent of senior TV executives being targeted by sophisticated recruitment scams. The scheme is on the rise in the entertainment business and appears to target execs with a certain level of experience who are already employed — and less likely to post publicly about the scam.

In the U.S. alone, reported losses to job and employment-agency scams soared from $90 million in 2020 to $501 million in 2024, according to the Federal Trade Commission. In Britain, Lloyds reported a 237 percent surge in advance-fee job scams in 2025.

Artificial intelligence is making such cons easier to execute at scale. Fraudsters can create convincing recruiter identities, personalized job offers and professional-looking correspondence. Microsoft’s 2025 Digital Defense Report specifically warned about fake LinkedIn profiles using AI-generated photographs to impersonate recruiters.

“There will be other people that will be being tricked right now,” says Lee.

For television executives — particularly Gen Xers — navigating one of the industry’s worst employment downturns, the timing couldn’t be worse. The scammers exploit not just financial insecurity, but something deeper: the desire of accomplished professionals to believe they’re still in demand.

And that $400,000 dream job? It was just the bait. What the supposed recruiter really wanted was something else entirely.