These people know how to talk to eager writers. I suspect they have tons of these shells out there and are actively scamming tons of people shutting down once they’re caught and just moving on to the next mark.
So beware everyone!

They encouraged me to message Ms. Smith and when she responded in 20 minutes with glowing praise and multiple grammatical errors I knew this was quite the ambitious scam. I sent them a message saying I hoped they didn’t mind if I reached out to her US media contact to verify with a smiley face.
A few minutes later all the messages were unsent and the profile all but vanished. Here’s what’s left…I’m posting this because it was more convincing than typical scams.