An AI Bot Tried to Hire Me (It Didn't Go Well)

I got an email this week from a guy named Halton Portnoy. He wanted a website for his new online job agency. Five pages, had a domain and logo, just wanted a ballpark on pricing.

It smelled like a bot from the jump. So I played along.

The Pitch

Here’s what came in through my contact form:

Hi there,

Hope you’re having a good week.

I’m in the early stages of getting a new online job agency off the ground. I’ve got a few folks I’m helping find work, and a few already in positions, and I’m thinking of taking it full-time. As a first step, I need a website.

It’ll likely be about 5 pages to start. I already have a domain name and a logo sorted, but that’s about it. I’d love to get a rough idea of costs involved. No pressure at all - just exploring options at this stage.

For now, I’d rather just stick to email or Teams rather than a phone call. If things seem promising, then I’d be happy to chat properly.

Cheers, Halton Portnoy

On the surface, it reads fine. Polite, reasonable scope, no weird urgency. But the first thing that jumped out was the .co.uk email address. My site targets Denver and the Colorado Front Range. Everything on it, from the copy to the SEO, is geared toward local businesses in my area. A guy from the UK doesn’t land on my site by accident and decide I’m the right person to build his job agency website. That alone was enough to make me suspicious.

Then there’s the “email or Teams only, no calls” bit. What a convenient way to keep everything text-based! The tone was a little too smooth. And nobody starting a recruitment agency in 2026 cold-emails a developer on a different continent without having any web presence of their own.

So I started digging.

Nobody by That Name

I searched for “Halton Portnoy” everywhere. LinkedIn, Google, social media, business directories. Nothing. The guy has zero digital footprint. You’d think someone launching a recruitment agency would at least have a LinkedIn profile, considering that’s where the entire industry lives.

The domain hp-connect.co.uk? No website. But HP Connect Ltd does exist on Companies House. Incorporated April 2025, registered at a virtual office in London Docklands, classified as IT services. Shockingly, the listed directors were not named Halton Portnoy.

Poking the Bot

I replied like a normal freelancer would, but asked if he had a LinkedIn I could check out.

His response:

Thanks for the quick reply. I’m after a brochure site initially, but with the ability to add job listings later. And yes, I’m on LinkedIn, it’s /in/haltonportnoy.

Answered every question perfectly. No hesitation, no personality. Real people forget things, go off on tangents, answer three out of five questions. This was too neat.

And the LinkedIn profile he gave me? Yeah, that doesn’t exist either.

The Company Number

Now I was just having fun. I asked for three things: his domain, his logo file, and his Companies House number so my “accountant” could get him set up in my system.

The domain is hp-connect.co.uk. I will email you the logo separately. The company number is 12345678.

12345678. The bot gave me a placeholder as a company number. Not even a realistic-looking one. Not a random string of digits that might pass a glance. The literal sequence 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. This is the part where I realized whoever built this thing either didn’t test it with real freelancers or didn’t care enough to seed it with a valid company number. Either way, not inspiring confidence in the operation.

I looked it up anyway, because why not. Company 12345678 is BOCIOC M LIMITED, a dissolved freight transport company in Rugby. So unless Halton pivoted hard from trucking logistics, not a match.

Messing With It

I couldn’t stop. I replied saying I’d logged the company number and asked if “Lucian Teodor” was still the primary director, since my CRM “automatically pulls that from UK filings.” Totally made up. I wanted to see if the bot would just confirm a fake name for a dissolved trucking company.

But I also did something else. I’d been using ChatGPT to help draft my replies, and on this one I intentionally left the drafting note in the email:

[Drafting Note: Ensure the tone sounds professional but helpful. Does this response seem human enough to elicit a reply?]

Two bots, both leaving their instructions in the email. Just a beautiful moment in modern communication. I wish I could say I planned it, but honestly I just forgot to delete the note before hitting send. Happy accident.

Update (March 10): A few days later, Halton actually replied:

Hi Bill,

Yes, still here. And yes, Lucian Teodor is indeed still the primary director.

Halton Portnoy

So to recap: the bot confirmed that a completely made-up person is the “primary director” of a dissolved freight transport company in Rugby. Lucian Teodor does not exist. I invented that name specifically to see if the bot would agree. It did, without hesitation. The bot has no idea what’s true. It just agrees with whatever you say, because that’s what keeps the conversation going. If I’d said the director was Mickey Mouse, it probably would have confirmed that too.

What’s the Point of a Scam Like This?

These AI-powered fake inquiries usually go one of two ways:

1. Overpayment scam. They send a check for more than the quoted amount, ask you to refund the difference, and the original check bounces.
2. Information harvesting. They collect your pricing, process, and communication patterns to build better templates or impersonate you to real clients.

Both depend on you being too excited about a new lead to ask basic verification questions.

There’s a third version I’ve heard about from other freelancers: they build trust over a few emails, then send a “contract” or “brief” as a PDF or ZIP. You open what you think is a project scope doc, and you’ve just installed malware.

The common thread: they want to move fast, stay text-only, and the details fall apart the second you check them.

What Gave It Away

If you freelance and get cold inquiries, here’s what to watch for:

• No online presence. Everybody has some kind of digital footprint in 2026. If you can’t find them anywhere, something’s off.
• Responses are too clean. Real clients ramble, forget attachments, answer half your questions, and get back to you two days later. Bots respond immediately with everything neatly addressed.
• No phone or video calls. Text-only communication is where bots can operate. A real client will eventually hop on a call.
• Verification details don’t check out. Ask for a Companies House number, a LinkedIn, a website. Real people have these things. Bots make them up. Badly.

Why These Scams Are Getting Better

A year ago, scam emails were easy to spot. Bad grammar, weird formatting, obvious templates. AI changed that. Now they’re clean, contextual, and personalized enough to pass a quick read.

This bot read my site well enough to know I build websites, asked for a reasonable scope (five pages), and matched the casual tone I use in my own copy. If I hadn’t noticed the UK email on a Denver-focused site, I probably would’ve spent 20 minutes writing a real reply.

The personalization is what makes these different from the spam we’re all used to ignoring. This bot didn’t send a generic “I need a website” email. It read my site, knew I build websites for small businesses, asked for a reasonable scope (five pages), and matched the casual tone I use in my own copy. It even knew to mention having a domain and logo already, which is exactly the kind of detail that makes a real inquiry feel legitimate. That’s not a template. That’s a bot that scraped my site and tailored its pitch to my services.

And the thing is, the bot was almost good enough. If the email had come from a .com address instead of .co.uk, I might not have looked twice. The scope was realistic. The tone was natural. The only reason I caught it was a geographic mismatch that had nothing to do with the quality of the writing. That should worry anyone who freelances.

These are only going to get better. That’s why process matters more than instinct. Don’t rely on “this feels off.” Have a checklist so you catch the ones that don’t feel off.

My Process for Vetting Inquiries

After this experience, I formalized how I vet new leads. It takes about two minutes and has saved me hours:

1. Search their name. LinkedIn, Google, social media. Everyone has a footprint.
2. Check their domain. If they mention a business, does it exist? Is there a website, even a basic one?
3. Verify the business entity. For US clients, a quick Secretary of State search. For UK, Companies House. Takes 30 seconds.
4. Ask for a call. “Can we do a quick 15-minute video call to discuss the project?” Real clients say yes. Bots make excuses.
5. Watch for perfect responses. Real people miss questions, respond at odd hours, and write messy emails. Robots are suspiciously thorough.

None of this is paranoid. It’s two minutes of Googling that saves you from wasting an afternoon on a fake client. I’ve been doing this for every cold inquiry since this happened, and it’s become second nature. The whole process takes less time than writing a reply.

The call request is the most effective filter. A real client who’s ready to spend money on a website will happily do a 15-minute video call. It costs them nothing and it moves their project forward. A bot can’t do a video call. Neither can most scammers. One question eliminates 90% of the noise.

The Simple Fix

You don’t need to be paranoid about every inquiry. Just verify before you invest time. A 30-second search, a LinkedIn lookup, or a “can we do a quick video call?” filters out most of this stuff immediately.

And if you’re building a scam bot, maybe don’t use 12345678 as your company number.

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If you’re a small business owner looking for a legitimate web developer, I’d love to chat. Check out my services or see some of my work. I’m based in the Denver area and work with businesses across the Front Range.