Email Art Scams

Oddly enough, I just spoke with another artist from Colorado who had received an email from someone "overseas" who wanted to purchase a number of the artist's paintings by credit card.  The artist was wary but proceeded... not sure of the exact details but the bottom line was that the "overseas" buyer wanted the art shipped via a particular shipping company and all the artist had to do was pre-pay the shipping charges.  The artist did that and the charges came to somewhere in the area of $5,000!  Which, of course, disappeared...  The artist never shipped the art as I understand and, obviously never received any payment.  

I'd heard the story several years ago but was surprised when today I received an email from an unknown "overseas" patron referring to telling me which of my art they wished to purchase and have shipped via "my shipper who handles all of my shipments..." Needless to say, Delete!

Anyway, just wanted to alert all that the scam is raising it's ugly head once more...

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  • Please cut and paste the contents of the email into this thread so that others may find if they are trying to figure out if they have received a scam.  Saying in general that you received a scam email won't help others to determine that they also have.  Most of the scam emails I receive have the exact same wording as others except the name of the sender and the name of the city/country they are moving to.

  • These people play on our greed. Yes, our greed. We see an opportunity to make money while not researching anything and too many times we end up like this.

    I get these emails almost on a daily basis, and each one is deleted immediately without  even bothering to open them.

  • Red flags are poor English, complicated second party shipping etc., and indications they have not looked at your web site about work or payment. DELETE and BLOCK

    • ^^^ = Exactly what Richard said.  So glad to have a delete button on my keyboard!  {vbg}

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