Artists Be Careful!

I received a comment here the other day purportedly from a person in Luxembourg interested in purchasing “a few” my paintings. A number of points in the comment shouted, “SCAM!”.

The scam reuses variations of the details of an old email based artist scamming scenario. My first exposure to this scam was by email about 10 years ago, purportedly from one “Tracey Coey.” This name seems to have been one of the first used, but now is one of over 500 additional! Since this first attempt, I have had only two or three others, but by providing the ability to comment here with my new art website format, a new potential avenue for thieves and scumbags has opened up.

Here is the comment:

“To Whom It May Concern:

I browsed your website and visualized the beautiful collection and could you please confirm if it’s possible to place my order with you for few of your products?
My store located in Luxembourg, and I know the difficulties people encountered shipping international as I do a lot of international shipment.
I have a reliable courier company that handle pickup and delivery from anywhere in the world, so shipment shouldn’t be an issue.
Payment will also be made in full once everything is in order, and quotation and invoice​​ are received for this order.
let me know when you are in office and ready to take my purchase order. ​​

Sincerely yours,
12 Rue Wiltheim
L-2733 Luxembourg (L?tzebuerg)
LUXEMBOURG”

Some scam tip-offs:

• Biggest tip-off: They wanted to use their own “courier” shipping service, that would pick up the artwork directly from my studio because of “problems shipping internationally.”
• They used an email address matching the name of an internationally known artist from England, not Luxembourg, but provided no actual first or last name in the shipping address.
• The “whois” server address of the source of the posted comment was in Nigeria!
• Grammar, spelling, and punctuation are usually pretty awful (although this one is not too bad).
• No mention was made of prices with this one, but usually the scammers asked for prices even though prices are already clearly posted on the website.
• Usually they want to pay with a money order (that turns out to be bogus after the painting is “picked up” by their experienced “shipping service.”) despite the fact that I very clearly only accept PayPal payments from buyers (unless I happen to know them personally).

Be careful out there people!

Some other references to this scam genre:

http://www.artscams.com/

http://stopartscams.blogspot.com/2010/06/scam-email-tracey-coey.html