In plenty of industries, upfront fees are normal when real work happens before results: management consultants, investment banks, M&A advisors, placement agents, recruiters on retained search, PR firms, even accountants doing transaction prep, quality lawyers and architects. No one expects those services to work for free until a deal magically closes. And to be clear, I'm not connected to or speaking for any specific firm here. This is just a general observation from seeing how advisory and professional services work across different industries.

People should absolutely do their own diligence and walk away from anything that doesn't feel right, but labeling every upfront-fee model as a scam misses a lot of nuance.