Know your scam art emails!
As we all know scam emails and scam text messages are commonplace in our digital lives. Unfortunately scammers are very sophisticated and know exactly what to say and how to engage people in a way that very sadly means that people can and do fall for their scams easily.
We have all heard of stories of people falling for scams and sometimes losing a lot of money through the scam.
Art Scam Warnings
I am of the opinion that scams should be written about as much as possible and information of how to be alert to scams should be widely circulated.
Thankfully I have never fallen for an art scam email but artists need to be aware that they can be the targets of scams and because of this I am highlighting one of many art scam emails that I have received along with pointers about how to look for signs and recognize why it is a scam email along with what marks to look out for.
The email that I am focusing on below, is possibly one of the more believable scam emails that I have received as normally they are badly written with bad grammar and littered with spelling mistakes or strange phrasings of words.
Art Scam Email Analysis
Here’s my analysis of a recently received Art Scam Email with 5 Red Flags or signs to look for:
Generic Title
Email is not addressed to you or to anyone in particular
Urgency or Immediacy to buy your art
Requests for freely available information
Strange budget figures
Art Scam Email: Red Flag 1 - Generic Email Title
As you can see here, the title of the email is very generic. Normally when I receive an email from a serious and authentic art collector they will have a less generic email title. Sometimes they will have the name of the art work they are interested in, in the email title box or quite regularly it might be something like “Hello Pigsy” in the title box but generally it will not be something non-specific like “Painting” as it is in this scam email.
Art Scam Email: Red Flag 2 - Email is not addressed specifically to artist
As you can see this email is not addressed to anyone. This alone should be setting off alarm bells, as it would indicate that the email was sent to numerous email addresses at once, with the hope that someone will fall for the scam and respond. If you do respond, it would be at this point that they would probably use your name and address with you directly which would lure you in further and give you more confidence to believe that it is an authentic email, but ultimately you would end up being scammed.
Art Scam Email: Red Flag 3 - Urgency around the purchase
This is a clever element to the scam (did I mention that scammers are very sophisticated?!). As you can see in this email, there is an urgency regarding the purchase because it is being bought for a wedding anniversary gift. The scammer plays on the desires of artists to make sales by indicating they need to take action or do something immediately. The use of the word immediately is a psychological trick that causes people to immediately respond to the email and get lured in to falling for the scam, rather than taking the time to analyse the email and assess whether it is a scam.
Art Scam Email: Red Flag 4 - Requests for freely available information
The fourth red flag for scam emails is the request for freely available information. You can see that in this email the scammers look for information about prices, sizes and availability. This information is all available on my website and it indicates that this was a generic email that was sent to lots of email addresses with the intent to lure someone to engage and then succumb to the scam. Genuine art collectors view items on my website and then contact me and engage with me about them. Requests for freely available information can indicate that there is no genuine or authentic interest in your art and again that is was sent to multiple emails.
Art Scam Email: Red Flag 5 - A budget that ranges from low to high or covers a lot of bases
As you can see there are lots of red flags in this particular email that should make everyone stop and think whether it is a scam. However, probably the most obvious one is where the budget is mentioned and it is two figures that are nowhere close to each other.
Lots of art collectors, who make contact with me about my paintings through email, will mention their budget. However, it is not done in this strange manner but will generally be said in a way like this “my budget is about $2,000-$2,500” or “I really like X piece but my budget is $xxx so doesn’t quite stretch to that particular piece”. As you can see there is a difference here - the scammers budgets are pie in the sky with random figures plucked from nowhere and inserted in the email. While an authentic art collector, if they mention budget, sets out a figure in a serious manner with reasoning and consideration behind it.
Watch out for scam emails!
There is lots of great information online about scam emails so do a google search before you respond to any email that seems a little suspect.
Personally, I think that if something seems to be too good to be true you should slow down and think hard before responding and engaging. A true, authentic and interested party will follow up with a second email or a call if they don’t receive a response to their first email as they will presume that their email was missed.
In particular if you are starting out in your art career, and you are obviously very keen to sell your art, (and of course it is always very exciting when someone contacts you about your work) I urge you to stop and think, and be wary of art scams as they are very common. Ultimately an art scam could cause you to lose both money along with a valuable piece of your art, and this is a position that no artist wants to be in.
Hopefully after reading this blog post, as was my aim, artists will be wise to scams and after seeing all the info I have provided you will know how to spot a scam and can avoid falling for one by investigating further and not rushing to respond.
By outlining the anatomy of a scam email, I’ve clearly given pointers or the red flags you should be wise to. Please do add other red flags in the comments box below!
How does the scam play out?
You are probably wondering how it exactly is a scam, after all they are offering you money for your art. These scams generally play out in two ways.
The most basic way it plays out is that they send you a check and then when it looks like the check has cleared in your bank account, you send them the art work. However, weeks after you have sent the painting, you will receive a call from your bank to let you know that the check could not be cleared and it has bounced. You basically end up with no money and your art work is gone (and the scammers will be uncontactable).
The second way that the scam plays out (and this is the more likely one, as they really want money and don’t actually want your art) is that they will agree to buy a piece from you for a particular price with arrangements to follow about a courier/collection agent who will call to you to pick up the art work. But when they send you the check it will be for more than what was the agreed price of the painting - they will give some reason like their agent made a mistake with the check. They will then ask you to send them back the excess money (probably a few hundred dollars / euros) when the check clears. You will do this when it looks like the check clears. But again a few weeks later you will receive a call from your bank to say the check could not be processed through the clearing house and the check has bounced. You will end up having lost the “excess” money that you returned to the scammer. With this scam, you won’t actually send the art work (because they don’t want it - and this in itself should be another red flag) because they will have given some story to you about working overseas and their agent will get in contact with you shortly in order to make arrangements to collect the art. All highly suspicious!
There may be other ways that this scam plays out. If you know of other ways that the scam works, please leave a comment in the box below so that all my readers can be aware.
Be alert and recognize scams
So as you can see there are lots of opportunities to spot the red flags that indicate scams. All you need to do is be wise to them, keep yourself informed and step back and don’t engage if you think there is anything suspicious about interest that you receive in your art. Be internet savvy and always look for red flags,
The other piece of advice is that if you do happen to fall for a scam you should contact your bank as soon as you realise something is amiss. Your bank may be able to offer assistance and may know ways of getting your money back.
Thankfully I’ve never been scammed like this, but if I was I would want to make sure that no one else gets scammed. So the other thing I would do is I would tell as many people as possible about these type of scams in order to prevent the scams continuing. It’s the reason why I wrote this blog because I think artists should look out for each other and help each other in anyway.
We are a community so let’s keep our members safe and unharmed. So if you know of any other scams that target artists, you can write a comment in the box below to spread the word and warn others. The only way these scammers will stop is if the scam stops working, And the only way the scam will stop working is if people learn to recognize it as a scam. So spread the word!
Edit - June 2022, another possible scam email received
Check out the strange wording about how they stormed on to some of my artwork. What does this even mean?! A definite red flag and the need to be alert to wether this email is authentic or a scam.
Another thing that should raise an alarm is the vagueness in regards to the art work that they like - you can pretty much see that it is a generic email that was sent out to a lot of artists.
So all I can say is, artists beware and always look out for red flags in regard to email scams!
Further Edit March 2023
The PIGSY email is regularly receiving what are fairly certainly scam emails, in fact I get them so regularly that I know they are definitely scams as they pretty much word for word identical.
A further scam I’ve started seeing a rise in is where suposed art collectors approach you to buy a piece of your work as an NFT, even though you are not selling it as an NFT. The gist of it seems to be that they offer you a very high price for a piece of your art (they don’t even specify which one(!) - which as of course you know after reading this blog, is a major red flag, with you only having to pay minting or gas fees. The sites that you are directed to are either dodgy platforms that don’t mint your NFT but instead just rob your money. Or the other variation is that they work for the minting platform and after you pay for your work to be minted the offer to buy it disappears. Either way you lose money so it is to be avoided.
If it seems to good to be true….
So I will end here with the mantra “If it seems to good to be true”. It’s something to always stop and consider and before you go any further to go make a search online in order to prevent yourself getting caught up in a dodgy art scam and loosing money or even worse some of your precious original artworks. There is lots of info online written on various artists personal website and also artist professional body website including the Visual Artists Ireland.
Furthermore, you can prevent other artists from getting involved in art scams, so spread the word of any dodgy emails or social media messages that you receive to other artists. Scammers will target and contact you in any way that they can, so beware of unsolicited messages on social media and always be alert and on the lookout for scams. A good way to do this is having the starting point of thinking about whether “Is this too good to be true”!