Something Hinky

Perhaps I should work up a boilerplate text for the beginnings of posts apologizing for the long intervals between them. Save me some trouble - apologies as always for my extended silence. I've been busy...

This will be a brief and practical post. I have plans for some rambling and impractical posts though!

Down to business. Maybe you're a working artist. Maybe you're not. Get this: I was emailed by an art scammer. That's kind of like trying to scam a homeless dude, I think. Unless your name is Damien Hirst, odds are good that if you're an artist you're not exactly a high capital target.

High. Capital. Target.

Let me share with you the email I got from this misguided clown:

from Louis Hayne loiushaynes@yahoo.co.uk to date Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 7:00 PM subject Interest in your work signed-by gmail.com

Dear

I was going to come over to the United States for christmas holiday and was hoping i could purchase some of your work in person and as it is i do not think i will be coming to USA but am highly interested in purchasing some of your piece so am thinking the best thing to do is have you send me some images of the piece you have available or website to which i can see them and i select the one's that interest me and we can work out payment.I hope to read from you soon.

Regards

Louise

Well, let's just say that I don't have a strong instinct for thinking that people are lying. Because I am myself pretty godawful at lying, as any number of my ex-friends will tell you. So I kind of assume everyone's telling the truth. Obvious signs of questionable intent such as, oh, three spellings of the sender name, one of them imaginary and the others covering two genders, the lack of specific address to me, the undisclosed recipient "To" line - all of those failed to twig my scam alarm. I mean, I didn't get excited because I was like, "There's something kind of hinky about this." You know what set me off though? That horrible, horrible English. What kind of self-respecting, art-collecting Englishmanwoman would mangle our glorious language like that? The language of Shakespeare, of Chaucer, of Milton, of Dante*, of Cervantes†?

I wrote back and traded a few emails with this illiterate dipshit. Finally I concluded that this was not just kind of hinky, but severely hinky. I started googling art scams. I assumed that art scams consisted of amusing anecdotes involving Vermeer and the Nazis, and problematic Salvador Dali prints.

So I was a crook. Bite me.

But it turns out that there are actually some pretty standard scams involving the kind of contact I received. The mechanics are totally weird. Here's how I think works:

1. They send you a cashier's check for the work, and a sizable overpayment for shipping.
2. You deposit the check and it clears. You send the work and record the actual shipping cost.
3. You send them the difference between their shipping overpayment and the actual shipping cost, via Western Union, which makes it impossible to trace the recipient.
4. Some weeks later, your bank figures out the original cashier's check was fake and sends you a letter written in a distinctly cool tone. By then, you're out some artwork (which nobody but you cares about) and the shipping refund (which the scammer cares about).

Can you believe this? It's almost easier to just go ahead and get a job. To the extent I understand the procedure, I am in the debt of one Kathleen McMahon, a talented Californian painter, gallery owner, and, to the point, self-described anti-scam samurai. She runs a blog, Stop Art Scams, at which she documents and explains art scams. Particularly note her page explaining the mechanics of the scam. She was kind enough to consider my case; and she's posted the further emails of Loius from my little exchange with him/her. It's kind of embarrassing how many emails I traded with this douche, but I also think one ought not to hide embarrassing things. And hey - maybe if you're reading this, you won't get suckered like I was (I was only suckered out of a little bit of time, but time is the one thing we can't get back).

Incidentally, I noodled around in Gmail until I was able to find the raw text of the first email I received. It turned out it was received from homiemail-mx23.g.dreamhost.com, if you will, with a return path to a certain mackerelrodrigo@gmail.com.

Moral of story: no matter how pathetic you are, somebody more pathetic is out to pick your pocket.


*Technically, Dante did not write in English.
†Nor did Cervantes.