Email from visa journey?? Casting??

[nargie 1]

I recieved this mail from visa journey.. Its spam?? Im really confused ! Did u get one?

Vintagegrl has sent you this email from http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.php.

I'm casting a television series that will document intercultural couples starting a life together in the US. We are looking for couples who've  recently obtained their K1 Visa and are planning to wed or have recently wed. Please let me know if you are interested in discussing further. Thanks!!

Jen D.

jend@vintagesouthproductions.com

www.vintagesouthproductions.com

[photomile 101]

I'm looking at the way they re approaching and it's ringing some alarm bells for me

For one thing soliciting you directly is extremely bad practice for any business when it comes to forums. If they have a legitimate inquiry they should be contacting the site owner (cap'n ewok) and asking for him to put out a news posting to members of the forum rather than someone directly. This constitutes as advertising and solicitation so I believe it's also against the TOS of the site.

Their site pulls all of their content from wix.com (That's where the whole flash file for their site is located) rather than from their own domain name of vintagesouthproductions.com - Now, this could mean that they've just created it with Wix and bought the name, but it's unusual. The design of the site is also a little sloppy in places (tell me how you're supposed to read the menu, little thought went into that). No business registration number either

Their site has no references from clients that have worked with Vintage South and no real proof of who they have worked with as a company, lots of references to what the pair of them have done as individuals but nothing 'as a company'. They could be a startup though.

Finally googling their name shows up lots and lots of adverts.... on anywhere that's free to advertise on. That's odd. Advertising for something like this could be done with a very small investment (sub 100 dollars) so why is everything free? Less than 70 people on twitter and 8 'likes' on Facebook means they have set this up VERY recently as well.

Why only you contacted? Why not the rest of the K1 filers on the site? Individual targeting is VERY strange behaviour for someone who would undoubtedly want a selection of candidates to pick from.

If you do decide to go ahead with it I would be extraordinarily careful. After all the K1 is a life changing process and it would be extremely easy for someone to screw this up if they got hold of some of your information and use it maliciously.

I would personally say that they need to provide a lot more information to justify themselves. There are LOTS of 'tv appearance' scams going on right now. I'd need references provided and a lot more before I felt comfortable enough to give them any information. If they are a genuine company this shouldn't be a problem at all, they could well be, but they've raised some quite big red flags here.

[photomile 101]

So, a bit more digging

A quick whois search (Which anyone can do, and this is publicly available already)

Registrant:

Vintage South Productions

1818 Burdock Drive

Winter Garden, Florida 34787

United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, LLC (http://www.godaddy.com)

Domain Name: VINTAGESOUTHPRODUCTIONS.COM

Created on: 03-Oct-11

Expires on: 03-Oct-12

Last Updated on: 03-Oct-11

Administrative Contact:

Dubasak, Jennifer @gmail.com

Vintage South Productions

1818 Burdock Drive

Winter Garden, Florida 34787

United States

310.748.8043

Technical Contact:

Dubasak, Jennifer @gmail.com

Vintage South Productions

1818 Burdock Drive

Winter Garden, Florida 34787

United States

310.748.8043

Domain servers in listed order:

NS49.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

NS50.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

So they bought the domain last year, for one year. It expires in October. Could support a claim they are a startup, but extremely surprising that they only bought for one year!

The address is also residential. Nothing wrong with a startup from home.

Under Florida State business requirements you can do a business search and here's some good news! They show as registered and the details match up

http://www.sunbiz.org/scripts/cordet.exe?action=DETFIL&inq_doc_number=L11000113672&inq_came_from=NAMFWD&cor_web_names_seq_number=0000&names_name_ind=&names_cor_number=&names_name_seq=&names_name_ind=&names_comp_name=VINTAGESOUTHPRODUCTIONS&names_filing_type=

Registered under L11000113672 and shows as active.

This is actually a good sign! So the more I look then yes this could well be a legitimate company. I would still suggest caution, and it's pretty poor the way they've chosen to approach you!

Edited July 21, 2012 by photomile

[nargie 1]

Thank u a lot! I didnt believe it too.. But u are amazing i felt right now live csi jajaj , im sorry because my englih is not so good but i understand perfectly... Im not going to answer and u have reason they can contact other k1 ! Thank u a lot

[Penny Lane 8,159]

Odd - I remember someone here posting a topic looking for K1s to be on a television show. Didn't know they were PMing/emailing people as well.

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/374582-new-tv-show-about-k-1-couples/

Edited July 21, 2012 by Evylin

[photomile 101]

from a totally different production company

[elmcitymaven 9,712]

I got the same message via Facebook. Having done DCF in 2007, I'm of zero use to them. I'm sure they found me via the VisaJourney page on FB.

[Kathryn41 3,205]

Odd - I remember someone here posting a topic looking for K1s to be on a television show. Didn't know they were PMing/emailing people as well.

http://www.visajourn...ut-k-1-couples/

Hmm, this is a different company. We exchanged correspondence with the contact person for this company (the poster is a friend and does not gain any benefit) and determined it was a legitimate company with some impressive credentials so gave him permission to post the request for participants. I would suggest that if anyone is interested in any sort of media exposure for their personal fiance journey that you contact the above link instead of responding to an unsolicited pm that has not taken the time to establish their credibility with Visa Journey. The poster of the above link posted here is legitimate.

In the meantime, we are looking into this other situation.

Edited July 22, 2012 by Kathryn41

[Penny Lane 8,159]

Oh okay, I didn't research enough into this to see who the company was.