How NJ filmmaker mined real-life dent repair scam experience for "Scammers"

The title shot from short film “Scammers” by Carl Kelsch. The film’s available to watch on YouTube as of late August. A link to the film is included below.

Who doesn’t hear stories about people being scammed and think they’re above the victim, that it wouldn’t happen to them? Sooner or later, though, everyone finds themselves in various states of vulnerability; and those are the points scammers are looking for.

For Bergen County, New Jersey-based filmmaker Carl Kelsch, being in a vulnerable state was the case when he was in his car at a Wendy’s drive-through and someone offered to fix a dent in his car. The resulting experience inspired his short film “Scammers,” starring Daniel Stewart Sherman ("Lodge 49," "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," "The Red Dead" videogame series) as Nick and introducing Nico Schumacher as Tasha. The father-daughter duo engages people in dent-repair scams, and in the film, which netted Kelsch a nomination for Best Director of a Narrative short for the film at the Queens World Film Festival, what Nick thinks will be another day utilizing his daughter’s help to find someone to scam doesn’t go as planned.

What does the dent scam entail exactly? An offer to fix a dent for a fraction of what an autobody repair shop would, followed by a rushed “band-aid” attempt – hammering away at the dent, drilling holes in tires that then need to be fixed, some spray-painting maybe – and then always demanding money for the “service,” which may or may not have been hastily agreed upon in the first place.

In early September of 2024, Kelsch recounted his experience being scammed at the Wendy’s drive-through in East Rutherford, N.J.

“In general I'm the kind of person who in theory would be suspicious and that a (potential scammer) wasn’t going to engage. But this particular dent was my Achilles’ heel because of the way it happened,” Kelsch said. “My partner, who I've been with almost 20 years since he moved to Jersey, was in the hospital the year before and got heart surgery.

On the final visit to see his husband Kelsch was so discombobulated that he pulled into a pylon.

“And it's (my partner’s) car, so I was dreading telling him about the fact that I dented his car the day that he had to come out of the hospital. And I also was just so angry … ‘When am I gonna have $1500 with everything else going on to fix this?’”