How it works
The first email looks ordinary. It compliments a recent video, names a product, and floats a paid deal. Then, before any numbers or terms land, it steers you off email: add me on Telegram, let's finish this on WhatsApp, message our manager at this handle. Once you are in the chat app the tone changes. The account is anonymous, the history can be deleted on their side, and there is no company mailbox tying the person to a real business. From there the script runs faster: a contract photo that does not hold up, a request for your wallet or bank details, an onboarding fee, or a link to a fake portal. Gaming offers are the most common cover for this, with fake RAID: Shadow Legends, mobile game, and app deals pushing creators to Telegram within the first two messages. The real programs, including Plarium's for RAID, keep the whole negotiation on their own email domain at plarium.com.
The tell-tale signals
- The email asks you to move to Telegram or WhatsApp, or hands you a chat handle or phone number instead of continuing over email.
- Real deal terms only appear after you switch apps, where nothing is on the record.
- The sender address is a free mailbox or does not match the brand it claims to represent.
- The pace is quick and the person avoids anything that would leave written evidence, like a company email thread or a signed PDF from a corporate address.
What to do
Keep the entire conversation on email. Reply and say you handle all sponsorship discussion in writing over email, and ask them to send terms there. A real agency or brand manager will agree, because their own legal and finance teams also want the trail. If they refuse to leave Telegram or WhatsApp, that refusal is your answer. Verify the brand on your own by finding the company's partnerships contact on its official site, and never trust a handle or number that arrived in the cold email itself.