Group Notices
Art Fraud / Art Spam / Art Criminals 2006
I thought I'd pass this on to you as I've been targeted by several people on the internet lately by what seem to be art scams. I became suspicious and contacted absolutearts.com who sent me these extremely helpful website addresses which made me realise how widespread the practice is: http://www.absolutearts.com/portfolio/help/fraud.html
http://christo.wwar.com/cgi-bin/artsforum/discus.cgiA typical approach goes like this: you receive an email from someone abroad who wants to buy several of your original paintings which they have seen on your website. They will send you a cheque to cover the cost of the paintings plus a large sum of extra money to cover 'shipping' costs or whatever. No doubt the cheque will prove to be a dud but in the meantime you will be asked to forward the 'shipping' costs or whatever to someone else.
Another approach is as follows: you are contacted by someone abroad who has a gallery or galleries or is mounting an exhibition or promotion in that country. Your work, which they have seen on the website, is just what they are looking for. If you get further involved, as happened to a friend of mine, at some point you will be asked for money up front to help with costs etc.
The thing is, they can sound interesting or even plausible at first and, even if you don't get involved in replying, they waste your valuable time assessing them in case they are genuine. I regularly sell prints on the Internet and these genuine approaches have to be sorted out from the fake ones. I send a formal, business-like reply stating my terms which include time to elapse for the payment to clear before parting with any goods. The dodgy ones don't reply.
- DGA member
