I was approached more than once for this. This con isn't about money, it's about inside information. I received an unsolicited email on the contact email address for my main website, which deals with the semiconductor industry. The author of the email introduced herself and said that her company was considering hiring me as a market analyst to analyze the potential of a large industry player. The website for the company the author worked for was impressive, and looked like the website of most lawyers. While the company claimed to be multinational, she was located in Taiwan. She said that her firm advised investors as to what markets and companies they should invest in, and they were looking to hire experts. I spoke to her on the phone, and she told me that I would be paid $350 for a one-hour phone conversation with her investment client. I agreed. During the call, she asked me for some inside information on the target company - information on future plans, business strategies, and specifically she asked me for the dollar amount that this company was selling to a particular mobile phone manufacturer. I told her that this sort of information, especially that last piece of information, was private and confidential, and the only way to get that last piece of information was to break many laws, which I was not willing to do under any circumstances. We left it at that, and she set up a call for next week. Soon after, she sent me another email. In this email, she asked to qualify my company by asking me for financials about my company, including my income for the past three years, lists of clients, and complete copies of past analysis. I responded back that this sort of information was somewhat intrusive for only $350, and remarked that I was reluctant to provide it. Her response was "I am surprised, everyone else freely provides me with this information". At that point, I began to doubt her honesty. Three days before the scheduled call, she sent me another email. She told me that her client (who she had not identified) wanted me to prove my knowledge of the marketplace. She wanted me to provide her, for free, before the call, with a detailed breakdown of the target company's quarterly revenues, broken down by product line(!!!), over the next five quarters. She also asked for an analysis of the target company's future product strategy. She asked for this, "to prove to my client that you really know this market". I responded back that what she was asking for was not free information. For an analysis of this type I would regularly charge $5,000, and I would also incur expenses for my estimate. And, in any case, what she was asking for was at least one month's worth of work for me. Her response back was the same as before, "I am surprised", blah blah blah. The time for the conference call came and went, and my subsequent emails to her went unanswered. It became clear to me that she had no intention of ever paying me anything. After some inquiries, I found out that she was a researcher tasked with doing an analysis of that marketplace, and she was attempting to con me out of this information. I received one other similar inquiry a few weeks later, also from a Taiwanese woman, this time promising me $650, and later asking me for detailed, expensive information "to prove my knowledge". I was recently approached by someone in the USA, who also offered me the promise of future money, but they wanted me to prove my knowledge by providing them, for free, with detailed information on a previous client with whom I still have a Non-Disclosure Agreement in force. When I mentioned the NDA, they responded back with "I'm sure you will agree that everyone ignores NDAs". I never responded back to them. Beware. For some people information is more valuable than knowledge.
I have encounter this before. One men asking me for the monthly trading statement that i trade using company funds. The man introduced he is the headhunter from one well known company that some hedge funds company looking for hire a manager. They asking for my trading style and fundamental analysis. I ignore them coz for this FA i can easily sell it for $10k for any banker.
Fellas, you'll see this all the time. Corporate and industrial espionage at its best. Always be wary about what your being asked and common sense goes a long way.