Scams Targeting Artists

Every day we hear about new twists on scams, new ways for criminals to take advantage or and steal from their victims. The thing to remember about scammers is that scamming other people is their full-time job – and they are very good at what they do! They target victims of all demographics; it doesn’t matter how many college degrees you have, your age, or even how much you have in your bank account. Anyone can fall victim to scams.

What can we do to fight back? It can be daunting when your foe is an invisible person on the internet or phone. But the first step is being able to recognize different schemes so we don’t fall for them in the first place.

1. Payment with digital checks

This is a conversation from my own Instagram account where someone offered to buy my artwork with a digital “echeck.” Let me be very clear – Digital checks are not a thing. The person wanted to take a picture of a paper check, then said I can just upload it to my bank app. Unfortunately, that’s not how mobile deposit works. You cannot upload a photo of a check to your bank.

2. NFTs

NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token; they are digital files (typically images of art, in our case) that supposedly have unique digital codes embedded in them, making them valuable “originals.” Unfortunately, anyone who has ever copied and pasted a file understands how easy it is to cheat this sort of claim. Everything involved with NFTs is a scam in my opinion, but there’s a twist to it that targets artists directly. A scammer will message you, saying they love your art and would love to buy it from you as an NFT – they might even offer you thousands of dollars for it. They will direct you to an NFT website, where you pay a fee to upload your art to be sold as an NFT. The upload/registration fees could be hundreds of dollars, and once you pay it both the scammer and the website will shut down and disappear.

3. Messages from “Support”

If you have a professional social media account, chances are you’ve gotten a few of these before. The account has a name, but their profile picture is of a “support” icon, and they send you a message threatening your page, saying it has violated the community standards and your page will be shut down unless you dispute it by clicking a link… And I’m guessing they ask you to enter a bunch of information, maybe even pay some sort of fees, but to be honest I’ve never clicked the link before so I’m not entirely sure what they try to steal from you. Regardless, it’s a scam and you should report it right away. Facebook and Instagram have ways of reporting users for this sort of scam, and the accounts will be shut down.

4. Vague emails or messages

The whole reason we are sharing our art online is to share it with other people, right? So it feels great when someone says “I love your artwork, and want to buy it!” But be wary of messages that start off vaguely. A true fan will be able to tell you which pieces they love and why. A scammer will be very general, because they are probably sending the same message to a thousand other artists too. I’ve gotten many emails before about “My anniversary is coming up and I want to buy my spouse a piece of your beautiful original artworks and my budget is $3,000-$8,000” This is an automatic red flag for me, since I don’t even have any pieces priced that high! I’ve gotten another version of this email that says they want to hire me to do some artwork, but they are deaf and cannot talk on the phone. Trained to be Iowa-nice, we don’t want to offend someone because of a disability, but unfortunately this is just another way that the scammer creates excuses why their identity can’t be verified with a phone call. The first time I got this sort of email, I tracked down the person’s name (the scammer used the name of a well-known deaf person) and messaged him on Facebook to verify whether the email was truly him or not. He was kind enough to confirm that it was a scam.

Being a professional artist and small business owner is already hard enough without being targeted by scammers.

Don’t let the possibility of a big sale cloud your judgment.

Don’t be afraid to slow it down and ask more questions if someone is pressuring you.

Ask your family or friends what they think about the situation.

Trust your instincts if you have any doubts for any reason.

And if you have already lost money due to being scammed, please report it to the authorities.

If you have accidentally given out sensitive information, alert your credit card company and bank so they can help you protect your accounts.