4 Scams Targeting Artists Right Now

Why Artists Are Easy Targets for Art Scams

Nothing about an art scam looks like a scam at first. It looks like the message you've been waiting for. Somebody found your work, somebody loves it, somebody wants several pieces and has the budget to pay for them.

Here are four scams artists keep seeing in their inboxes and DMs. A fake buyer who overpays with a cashier's check and asks you to forward the difference to a courier. A stranger offering to turn your paintings into NFTs. A receipt for a charge you never made, with a helpful number to call. And an official-looking warning that your Instagram account is about to be deleted.

I've been selling my own work online since eBay was where artists sold things, and the first one has been circling since at least 2006. It's still here because it still works.

The New York Times reported in March 2023 on fake buyers fishing the art world, citing roughly $124 million in damages across more than 40,000 cases involving counterfeit checks and fraudulent foreign money orders. Those cases cover online fraud broadly, not art sales alone. If you sell anything online, including a sofa on Facebook Marketplace, the same script gets pointed at you.

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Scam #1: The Buyer Who Wants to Surprise His Wife

It arrives by email or Instagram DM, rarely on a platform like Etsy where messaging requires the sender to hold an account of their own. The opening line is some version of this: I saw that my wife was looking at your artwork.

That detail isn't small talk. It's load-bearing. The spouse gets introduced early so that later, when it's time to pay, there's a ready reason a credit card won't work. He doesn't want the charge showing up where she'd see it and spoil the surprise.

The next message usually asks you to send details and prices on a few pieces. My prices are on my website, all of them, so that request always slows me down. On its own it proves nothing, since people do miss information on a website. It's the first item in a pattern, and the rest arrives quickly.

The buyer gets specific and expensive. They want several pieces, usually totaling thousands of dollars, and they rarely ask a single question about the work itself.

For an emerging artist who hasn't had a sale that size yet, this is the moment the critical thinking goes quiet.

Then comes the move. They're relocating somewhere far away, international shipping would be complicated and expensive, so you shouldn't handle it. Their courier will collect the work instead.

Then the numbers arrive. You have $3,200 of art they want. They'll send a cashier's check for $5,000, and you pay their courier $1,000 in cash or by money order. Point out that the check is larger than the total and you'll be told to keep the difference for your trouble.

Why the check clears and then doesn't

Banks are required by law to make deposited funds available quickly, and available isn't the same as verified. The money shows up in your account. The check works its way back through the system over the following weeks, bounces, and the bank takes its money back out. By then you've sent the courier a money order and shipped the artwork, so you're out both. The Federal Trade Commission lays out the full mechanics of how fake check scams work.

The signals, roughly in the order they appear

No single one of these proves anything. Together, they're the script:

• A purchase framed as a surprise for a spouse or partner
• A request for prices you've already published
• Interest in your most expensive pieces, with no curiosity about the work
• A relocation abroad that rules out you arranging shipping
• A payment larger than the total, with instructions to forward the difference
• A third-party courier or shipper you didn't hire and can't verify

Scam #2: The NFT Conversion Offer

The second one usually lands as an Instagram DM. Someone wants to buy your work as an NFT, or offers to mint it for you, since you probably don't know how.

I'll be straight about what I know and what I don't. I don't mint NFTs, and I can't walk you through every technical variation of this one. What I can tell you is where these conversations go, because the ask takes a handful of familiar forms:

• A minting fee or "gas" fee you pay up front, usually to a wallet address or through a payment app, before your work can be listed
• A request to connect your crypto wallet to a site they send you, which can authorize transfers out of that wallet
• A sale that supposedly already went through, with a fee you have to pay before the proceeds can be released to you
• An offer to handle the technical side on your behalf in exchange for a deposit, since you've said you don't know how any of it works

In every version, you pay or grant access first, on the promise that a larger payment comes back afterward. That's the same structure as the courier in the check scam.

A useful test: would you hand this person a $2,000 painting based on what you actually know about them right now? If the answer is no, don't hand them $200, your wallet, or your login either.

Scam #3: The Receipt for Something You Never Ordered

This one isn't specific to artists, which is exactly why I want you to see it. It comes in as a receipt or an order confirmation, and the amount is engineered to make you flinch: a $400 Geek Squad renewal, a $1,000 Amazon charge, something you'd notice.

Look at the sender address and it usually falls apart on the spot. Something like geeksquadkentucky@gmail.com, not an address at the company's real domain. But panic reads the dollar amount, not the domain.

The message includes a phone number and an email so you can dispute the charge. Call it and you'll reach a reassuring customer service voice who needs to verify a few details before processing your refund: your full name, your date of birth, your card number, maybe your Social Security number, maybe a password. Nobody is reversing a charge. They're assembling enough of your identity to use it.

Never use the contact information inside a message you weren't expecting. Open a new tab, go to your actual account, and check your order history yourself. If the charge isn't there, nothing happened.

Scam #4: The Account Suspension Warning

The fourth one shows up if you're on social media at all, and especially if you're running ads. An email that appears to come from Instagram or Facebook tells you your account has been flagged for a violation or is scheduled for deletion, and there's a link to appeal it.

The link opens a login page that looks correct in every visible respect. You type in your email and password, nothing much seems to happen, and whoever built that page now has access to your account, your DMs, your followers and any ad account attached to it.

For artists, that carries a second cost. Rebuilding a following you spent years growing is expensive in a way that never shows up on a bank statement.

• Never log in through a link in an email. Open the app and look for the same notice inside it.
• Treat urgent deletion language as a warning sign that needs independent verification. Platforms do send real policy and security notices, which is exactly why the fake ones work.

The Policies That Make You a Hard Target

You don't need to evaluate every message on its merits. That's exhausting, and it's how people get caught: one persuasive story on a tired day at the end of a slow sales month. A short set of rules you apply without deliberating will protect you better than vigilance will.

1. Publish your prices. It removes friction for real buyers, and it turns a request for a price list into information rather than an ordinary question.
2. Get paid through a channel you control, like a credit card, a payment link, or an invoice from your own system.
3. Never accept a payment larger than the amount owed, for any reason anyone offers.
4. Never forward money to a courier, shipper, or agent introduced by a buyer.
5. Don't ship until funds have genuinely cleared. Money visible in your account isn't the same as a cleared check. Ask your bank directly, and wait.
6. Never use a phone number, link, or address supplied inside an unexpected message. Go to the company or the app yourself.
7. Turn on two-factor authentication everywhere that offers it, starting with your email.

If you want help building a more reliable way to sell your work online, my free masterclass covers how to sell more art, from pricing to the conversations that close a sale.

If You Already Sent Money

Art scams survive because their scripts get refined for years against millions of people, which is why getting caught by one says very little about you. The useful next step is putting rules in place so you don't have to spot the next one perfectly.

If money has already moved, work through this in order:

1. Tell your bank you believe the check or transfer is fraudulent, before anything else moves.
2. Send nothing further, including a partial refund, a shipping payment, or a fee to release funds.
3. Report it to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
4. File with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service if a postal money order was involved.
5. Report the account or message to the platform it came through, and change the password on any account where you entered your login.

Report it even if you doubt you'll see the money again. Reports are what build the cases.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

• Federal Trade Commission, "How To Spot, Avoid, and Report Fake Check Scams" — why deposited funds become available before a check is verified
• ReportFraud.ftc.gov — the FTC's fraud reporting portal
• U.S. Postal Inspection Service reporting page — for counterfeit postal money orders and mail fraud
• The New York Times — March 2023 reporting on fake buyers targeting the art world, source of the $124 million figure cited above