A California artist, Katie Moe, who describes herself as an ‘Artist and Anti-Scam Samurai’ has a blog devoted to informing fellow artists and other people about a common emailtype scam, the ‘Art Scam’.
A spam email will ask to buy something from your website or for you to source and provide products (usually high value items or a large number of items that add up to a high value. Payment is a (stolen) credit card or a (counterfeit) check and in most cases, there is a requirement to ‘forward’ an overpayment to a third party, usually a shipping or customs agent. The overpayment is always demanded by Western Union and is always overseas. Often this is the payload. Everything else is just window dressing. If you are stupid enough to send the products you will probably lose them.
The joy at getting a lucrative, large order can blind people to the sometimes obvious red flags. This is when the scammers win big!
Read her blog, she specializes in this type of scam and has seen them all!
http://stopartscams.blogspot.com/
One response to “‘Stop Art Scams’ blog”
There are various kinds of fraud – from credit cards, insurance and even with pieces of artwork. Fraudsters will do almost anything just to fool their victims and this reminds us to always be on the lookout for anomalous transactions and deceitful people.