Cam the Scam

Flashback, Toronto 2015: Camille Roche arrived already smirking.
We called him Cam. He hated it ;
“Zee name is Camille.” He’d spit with a grimace. It was a tiny, nourishing victory we enjoyed daily.
He was beautiful in the way men are when consequences have only ever been theoretical. A massive tattoo climbed his chest, slithered up his throat, grazed his jawline, and threatened his earlobe like it was considering squatting there permanently. Paired with a thin Québécois accent, the effect on women was immediate and alarming. Release him into a bar and he’d form a following faster than a cult with free wine.
Cam spoke exclusively in over-confident half-truths. He had the cadence of someone who had never finished a thought because no one had ever asked him to.
Like me, he was a booking agent. Like me, he’d hustled his way into the biz alone. Unlike me, his roster was almost entirely big-room EDM (electronic dance music). DJs;  the USB-stick leisure class;  it was back when international DJs were being paid $25,000 to $75,000 a night to press play for three hours in big city superclubs built on cocaine, sex(ism) and regret.
Cam landed an internship at The Agency Group, splitting his time between our New York and Toronto offices . In Toronto, he effectively became my assistant, which in hindsight was a bit like letting a raccoon manage your pantry. We started plotting an in-house electronic department, and after six months of relentless optimism, the partners agreed.
TAG EDM was born.
We celebrated in clubs designed for people who consider debt a personality flaw. Cam greased bouncers with folded bills held and passed like communion wafers. Nights blurred. Reality loosened. His “casual” cocaine habit became aspirational, which is a drug I avoid because it reliably turns men into motivational posters with bad math and worse breath.
At TAG, all bookings were tracked in a weekly-printed digest /bible called the Route Book. It was boring. It was authoritative. It had never been wrong.
Cam, however, was creative.
His monthly numbers started inflating into the low six figures. Management began storming into our shared office, Route Book in hand, pages bleeding orange highlighter.
“How,” they demanded, “are you booking shows that don’t exist?”
Then my phone started ringing.
A promoter in Tucson, calling at midnight, wondering where their headliner was. An artist called, stranded outside a club in Orlando — not on the listings, not expected, definitely not getting paid — despite having flown in that morning from Paris. Or Ibiza. Or Berlin;Somewhere expensive enough to justify the lie.
Eventually, even denial lost interest.
Cam wasn’t confused. He wasn’t overwhelmed. He wasn’t young.
He was running a messy but elegant scam. double-booking artists, inventing shows, collecting commissions (& most crucial to his scheme, deposits) on bookings that existed only in his Google Calendar and imagination. He was a one-man Ponzi scheme with good cheekbones.
He was fired immediately.
TAG EDM died the same month it was born, which is impressive even by electronic music standards.
Cam vanished. I remained , apologizing to promoters, calming artists, repairing trust with nothing but honesty and a suddenly very uncool haircut.
Cam walked away untouched,
but the damage stayed, fully booked and non-refundable. Mixtape moment:
TSOA #15: the TAG EDM years
https://tidal.com/playlist/fb7bcc00-5e8e-4832-b5f0-7db5a64c77f1