I just got a scam from someone saying they wanted to buy two paintings from my website. Everything about it seemed very weird, funny wording and funky email address. However, I wanted to be sure I wasn’t dissing a potential client so I went along with it thinking I’m not sending anything to this person until the check clears.
A few bizarre emails later and I was convinced it was a scam, my wife thought to do a google search for any similar art scam and bingo we found a very useful website www.bogusartfair.info that had the very same scam listed that was being done to me. Basically, they almost seem legit in wanted to buy your artwork and will send you a certified cashier check for the full (or even more) price of the artwork. However the trick is that they send you a counterfeit check that appears to be very real and may even fool the bank when you cash it. They then ask you to pay their special private shipper from the check. I’m not sure what happens to you when the bank finds out it’s bogus but thankfully I will never have to know!
Painting Perceptions was started in 2009 by Larry Groff to promote the ideas, practice and experience of painters working from observation in a modernist vein from around the world through interviews, essays, videos and community. It later evolved to include imagination-based and abstract painting as well.
Had one of these a few years back and kept it going as far as getting the fake check, which looked like a bad Xerox. The email exchange was pretty amusing, with my new collector sharing all sorts of extraneous personal details…Sad that these things actually do hook people sometimes.
I’ve been contacted by these people on two occasions. Once in December of 2006 and the last was a few days ago. I felt weird about the whole thing the first time and before proceeding I asked a friend’s opinion. After doing a search on google we found out this was a scam. Second time I received an email it felt weird as well but this time it was different. They seemed to know what they were talking about. After getting a response from them I googled the email and again, it came up as a scam. So sad this is what these people do for a living, if you can call it that…how can one live with oneself scamming hard working people?
Great blog!
I have one last week which is sitting in the trash folder. My new collector is called Luma Azar. I haven’t replied. Would be happy to forward it if you know of any agency looking into this kind of fraud.
Also have had a dodgy tax rebate offered from ‘customs’ requesting my bank card details but have requested a letter to authenticate. The email address looks ok as it’s a .gov.uk but still think it’s weird .