Dear Colleagues and Friends:
Please be aware with new buyers paying in check, even when paying in cashier's check. Take time to read below the d'ART warning, followed by my own experience:
Posted On: 5/3/04 12:40 PM (Updated on 5/3/04 3:46 PM by troy)
Greetings d’ART members.
This is a notice of an internet scam that has been proliferating lately. The scam works like this:
Someone contacts you offering a price for your artwork. If you accept, they offer to send you a check for an amount over your agreed upon price and for you to send/wire them the difference.
Here is an actual reply sent to a d’ART member:
Due to company policy this Payment has to be made out in this amount to you, because company policy only allows a refund payment on one Cashier Check, so you are required to deduct the cost of the piece which is $14,000USD when the payment gets to you and refund the balance of $8,000USD to our shipping agent via western union money transfer for him to be able to offset shipping charges. After payment has reached you and balance sent back to him, our agent would come, pick up title and take the piece to a prepaid shipper to be shipped to our client, while you send title papers and other necessary documents via FedEx courier services to our client.
This scam may be obvious to most, but we felt it necessary to alert our members.
Thank you for your patronage.
The staff at d’ART (Fine-Art.com)
Posted By: milos_kriz in reply to Topic Msg #:
Posted On: 5/27/04 8:49 PM Viewing 1 of 1 Replies
We at Milan Kriz's Online Art Gallery appreciate d'ART staff's concern about Internet scam attempts... we almost felt ourselves in such kind of fraud... we received a Cashier's Check from the Bank of America for the amount of US$23,000.00... and we were supposed to return a shipping/handling balance of US$8,000.00 via Western Union to a third party carrier... but "wisely" or "luckily" we always wait until check pass clearing process to perform a transaction.. this cashier's check ended to be a Counterfeit item (Even when it have all security features of the Bank Of America's checks)...
We didn't lose anything (well, a US$58.00 return fee)... but any careless artist or gallery could be trapped in this sick game and deliver some good money to the trash....
If any of the readers want further information about our experience... please do not hesitate in to contact us.... We even dare to propose d'ART staff to send a massive message (if d'ART staff agrees to do it, of course) with the above warning to the whole d'ART community, (it was posted on May 3rd... we were contacted by scamers on Apr 14th, so we coulnd't take advantage of it... but some colleagues could be being victim of scam right now, and we have the opprtunity to save'em and... maybe, to catch the bad guys... We'll report our experience to the FBI)
Please take care... and be aware!!!!!
Milos Kriz
webmaster
www.milankriz.com
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