Art Scam! Warning to Fellow Artists

An unusual post on this site. Just a warning to fellow artists out there relating to an email I received last week.

 

On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 2:54 AM, Robby Marlon <robby.marlon1@gmail.com> wrote:

My name is Robby from Snyder, Texas. I was looking for some artwork online and i found your contact while searching. I will like to purchase some of your work for my wife as a surprise gift for our 20th anniversary. Please kindly send pics and prices of some of your art which are ready for immediate sale within price range $500- $1,500. I hope to hear a lot more about any available piece in your inventory ready for immediate sale.

 

Thanks and best regards,

 

Robby Marlon

If you receive an email like this one then it is most likely a scam. I have to admit I was initially taken in by this. Reading it again; there are some signifiers in the message that indicate it could be a scam, but the thing about this particular scam is that it is targeted at individuals who share their work online, it plays to the aspirations of artists and partly because it is targeted in this way, it did not seem beyond the realm of possibility that the email was genuine.

All scams suck obviously, but for artists, who typically do not make a great deal of money from their work this one will bite. Alarm bells rang for me when ‘the buyer’ stated they wished to pay by cheque which I thought was strange as they had insisted they wanted ‘immediate shipping’ The ‘buyer’ asked for my number so they could give me a ring which creeped me out. I also noticed they had signed off one of our later exchanges with a different name.
I googled ‘art scams’ and quickly found this useful article....

https://www.artworkarchive.com/blog/don-t-be-fooled-by-email-art-scams-how-to-spot-and-avoid-fraud
This gives you the general lowdown on this particular scam which is centred around ripping the artist off by pocketing shipping costs. The ‘buyer’ will have some obscure reason why they need it shipping via their own choice of shipping company. Beware!