For everyone's benefit, here's a recent encounter that a friend if mine was in. Friend has a startup that's raising. They put their name out on a bunch of plac

For everyone's benefit, here's a recent encounter that a friend if mine was in. Friend has a startup that's raising. They put their name out on a bunch of places, including various listings. Someone contacts them. They say they are some company. It's a real company that exists, but not a well known one. Website has some odd things about it. They arrange a call. They are super impressed with the startup. They want to invest. They send a term sheet. All done in a suspiciously quick manner. They don't know what questions to ask, and they are not very good at expressing themselves. The term sheet says the startup has to buy some kind of ancillary service, like insurance or something like that, for a small amount of money compared to the millions that are about to be invested. This is the scam, they aren't real investors, they want you to think by paying some small fee you unlock some investment. For someone in a 3rd world country it can be worth the time, talking a few hours to various startups to scam them out of a few grand. Heck it's even worth it for this guy in the article, who is in the UK.