My friend and personal brand client Paul Ryazanov, CEO of MageCloud, just posted a warning on LinkedIn that every agency operator should read.

A client of his forwarded an email asking whether a conversation was actually with him. It wasn’t. Someone had been emailing his clients pretending to be from MageCloud, using a generic Gmail address rather than a real company domain. Everything else looked the part: a friendly tone, technical-sounding language about platform updates and performance issues, and even screenshots from Google PageSpeed Insights to make the pitch feel credible. The hook was a free audit of the client’s site.

Paul’s takeaway is that it’s a dangerous time when scammers go this far to mimic a real agency and the people behind it.

My comment on his post: it’s wild how brazen these scammers have gotten. They’re not just spinning up fake content anymore, they’re impersonating real people like Paul and me. The silver lining is backhanded but real, since they only bother impersonating people they think are credible. If nobody trusted Paul, nobody would pretend to be him.

If you ever get a cold email claiming to be from Paul or MageCloud, check the sending domain. Real messages come from magecloud.agency, not a Gmail address. When in doubt, reach out to him directly through his personal site at paulryazanov.com or through the company at magecloud.agency.