Every escort directory in the world has fake listings on it, and anyone who tells you theirs has none is selling something. The honest position is that fakes exist, that most of them follow the same handful of patterns, and that a client who knows the patterns almost never gets caught by one. This is those patterns, written for the person doing the booking.

What a fake listing is for

A fake listing is a scam, and there are only three things a scammer wants from you: a deposit that never turns into a booking, a payment for a “verification fee” or a “cancellation fee” that does not exist, or enough personal detail to extort you later. Everything odd about a fake listing is odd because it is built to get to one of those three quickly. Keep that in mind and most of what follows is obvious.

The signs

The photos are too good, and too consistent. Real advertisers take their own photos, in their own rooms, over a period of months. A set of six studio-quality images with identical lighting and no background is usually lifted from somebody else’s portfolio. Save one and run it through a reverse image search. If it turns up on a stock site, a model’s portfolio or a listing in another country, you have your answer.

The price is well under the market. Rates in a New Zealand city sit in a fairly narrow band and everybody advertising knows what it is. A listing at half the going rate is not a bargain. It is bait.

The conversation goes straight to money. A real advertiser screens you first, because their safety depends on it. Someone who asks for a deposit before they have asked a single question about you is not screening. They are collecting.

The deposit method is one-way. Gift cards, vouchers, a transfer to an account in a different name, or crypto to an address you were sent in a text message. Real touring escorts do ask for deposits and that is normal; the difference is that a real one gives you a way to pay that can be traced to the person you are booking, and will happily talk on the phone first.

A second fee appears. The booking is confirmed and then there is a “security verification”, a “hotel deposit” or a “cancellation from the last client” that you need to cover before you can be seen. There is no second fee. Stop the moment one appears.

The number and the name do not stay put. The listing says one name, the texts sign off with another, and the phone number changed since last week. A person has one name and, mostly, one phone.

Nothing about it is local. A real Auckland listing mentions Auckland things. A fake one is written for anywhere, because it is running in twenty cities at once.

What a directory’s ID check proves, and what it does not

Directories increasingly verify advertisers, and this one checks identity before a listing is published at all. It is worth being precise about what that establishes, because people read more into a tick than it can carry.

An identity check establishes that the person who created the listing is an adult and that the identity document they presented is a real one that matches them. That is a meaningful bar. It keeps minors off the site and it means a scammer has to hand over real identity details to run a listing here, which most will not do.

It does not prove the photos are current, and it does not prove that the person who answers the phone is the person in the photos. No check run at sign-up can promise anything about a meeting that has not happened yet, and a directory that tells you it does is overselling. Treat the tick as one strong signal among several, and keep screening.

What to do when something is off

First, do not send money to make the feeling go away. Every one of the patterns above ends with a payment, and the payment is the only part that hurts.

Second, report the listing to the directory you found it on. On this site the report link is on every profile, a person reads every report, and a listing that turns out to be fake comes down and stays down. The report helps the next person as much as it helps you.

Third, if you have already paid, report it. In New Zealand the government’s Consumer Protection Scamwatch explains how to report a scam and what your bank may be able to do, and it is worth reading before you decide it is too embarrassing to bother. Sex work is legal here, and so is being a client of it. You have not done anything that stops you making a complaint.

The short version

Use a reverse image search on the photos. Expect to be screened before you are asked for anything. Pay a deposit only to someone you have spoken to, by a method that leads back to them. Walk away from any second fee. And read the escort safety centre once, because the advice for clients and the advice for workers turns out to be mostly the same advice.

Then go and browse ID-verified escorts with your eyes open, which is the only way anyone should.