Scammer Alert

Please beware of people offering to paint your portrait, calling you their "muse" (lmao) and asking you to send thousands of $ in deposits for a portrait commission that will, I can assure you, never happen.
The typical scammer BS. Don't fall for it.

Screenshot showing how the scam works.

Hey everyone, there is a scam going around all over Instagram, someone pretending to be the artist and using my work (and many other artists' work as well!) to scam vulnerable people out of their hard-earned money. This has been going on for a while now and I doubt it will stop any time soon but we can at least raise some awareness and educate ourselves about it, right?

I just posted on my social media pages the screenshots of what the full scam looks like, and you can see the same thing here in the image above.

They are all worded the same:

"Hey, I really like your profile and your face! I'm a painter working on murals (the authenticity of human facial emotions and expressions) for a collector client of mine. I would like to use you as a muse for a painting. You will totally get paid for it as well. Let me know if this is something you're interested in"

Since the Meta algorithm for some reason reduces the visibility of such important posts, as if they don't want you to properly warn people, I decided to start a fcking blog!!! (which I thought I'd never do cause obviously I'm not a blogger and English is not my native language, but hey). So I published it here on my website where it will live forever free of any ban or censorship.

btw this post is getting updated a lot because I'm constantly getting new useful information and new screenshots of the scams from various people, new scammer usernames keep popping up, so come back from time to time to read the updates.

The Meta (Facebook & Instagram) support

It is clear that Meta doesn't care that their users are being constantly scammed, spammed or swarmed by bots on a daily basis because things are only getting worse as your reports are going nowhere and you're getting no support and no replies when you report any of these. I do have to say, whenever I reported so far my art being used without credit or permission, or any similar abuse of my work, Instagram support removed those individual posts for me, but that's about all they did and we’ll see how they will do in the future. I still report a lot, every few weeks I have a full list of either ignorant or mean people that like to steal my work and pretend it's theirs. I've had my work being sold in random Etsy shops, Twitter pages calling themselves the "Official Twitter of artist Ivana Besevic" or "Ivana Besevic Official" connected to Ivana Besevic NFT shop at OpenSea that, you guessed it, wasn't my shop. I'm not selling NFTs and never have. Not to mention my work being shared online in a sneaky way without any credit for likes and clicks which especially gets on my nerves...

To report your work being abused on Instagram, fill in this form. But don't expect miracles, this will only remove individual posts from Instagram and not ban the entire profile that you're reporting, no matter how many artworks they have stolen from you or any other artist.

Of course, Instagram didn't remove or ban these scammer profiles completely from the platform even after I sent them proof and screenshots of these obvious scams. They completely ignored all my questions and concerns or simply there is nobody to investigate them. I don't know the Instagram rules on this, but I noticed many of these scammer profiles disappeared from Instagram a moment later on. These scammers also might have deactivated their own accounts temporarily to avoid getting banned from the platform. But if they were banned from Instagram, it is possible that a profile has to be reported a number of times by a certain number of people before it gets fully banned. Let me know below in the comments if you have any info on how this works exactly and in the meantime - keep reporting @haileysalbum @cardiffartistry @lilly_kayle147 @rachellynn168  @rachelynnarts and others cause the list keeps growing.

One example of Instagram being useless as usual:

Instagram support fail.

Lol, I really wonder what those Community Guidelines are when the Community is so easily scammed on a daily basis? And the part when they say in this automated response "we understand that people may express themselves differently"  yes, Instagram, scammers are people too, right?

Meta (Instagram & Facebook) algorithm

Check my Instagram and Facebook posts about this problem and see how both of my posts have barely any likes or engagement from users, and it's not because people don't care but because the visibility on both of my posts is drastically reduced. Most of my followers don't even see these posts because they won't appear on their timelines anyway. For comparison, my other posts generate thousands of likes and views  (per post!), in this case, my Instagram page which has 130K followers got barely 200 likes on this post while my Facebook page of 83K followers got less than 10 likes on this post. You could help, while you're at it, by liking & sharing these posts about the scam with your friends and contacts to improve their visibility.

About the scam

The scam itself is not clever at all, it's pretty dumb actually and most of us will easily see through it but, unfortunately, there are and will always be vulnerable people out there that will fall for it. In this particular scam, the scammer tells you their client will be sending you a full amount check for 3500$ and tells you to take your cut (in this case 500$) and wire the rest to him. Of course, it's a faulty check and if you're not careful you'll be losing 3K$ for nothing. I've had bank workers commenting that they've dealt with this personally and had the victims coming to the bank ready to transfer the money! Fortunately, the bank fraud departments would stop the wire in time and place the money on hold, but we know perfectly well that doesn't happen every time. This type of disgusting manipulation happens to regular, decent and trusting people every day and if that happened to you it's absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about. I'm mad that it happens anyway so hopefully this blog post and all my social media posts today and in the future about this problem will help more people see what the scam looks like and recognize the wording used in all of these scams.

One of my fellow artists almost sent the money to the scammer in this typical so called "refund scam":

"I had someone attempt a scam on me in June pretending to like my work though and wanting to buy a commissioned piece. They sent a cheque for a down payment and claimed their secretary accidentally added an extra zero and was asking if I could e-transfer them back the remaining funds...I was naîve just super excited someone liked my style and wanted me to paint for them, never crossed my mind it could be a scam since they seemed so genuine, but thankfully my bank was smart enough to recognize it was a faulty check. I'm still extremely embarrassed to have fallen for it but at least I didn't lose anything in the end, the guy had no remorse when I called him out. He stole someone else's account to make it seem like he was a real person. I called the company on the check after and they said they were informed of this many times this year their name was being used for scams. People have no heart. I also displayed this in my stories for people to learn from my mistake of too much trust. Im glad you are getting things out there!! They will come up with anything it seems! Wishing you truly all the best and to anyone else reading this stay safe!!"

Protect and educate yourself

Because these platforms are not going to help you and when you report - they will ignore you, when you share it online - your post visibility will be reduced, as crazy as that sounds but it's true- they'd rather protect these scammers instead of their actual users, the actual real people.

 If you ever receive a message like this one offering to paint your portrait, ask for the previous examples of their work, and when they send you the artwork images, run a reverse google image search which will show you who this image/art really belongs to. Most of the people that sent me screenshots of these scams did the same image search and found me to be the actual artist almost instantly.

Google image search

The most important thing you should do is always talk to your bank before you send money to people you don't know, especially when someone claims they changed their mind/made a mistake and asks you to refund them. Talk to bank workers and show them the messages you received, and have them double-check the validity of the cheque you received. They deal with this often and are able to recognize the scams and educate you on scams in general. 

Remember, it takes 30 days for a cheque to bounce. Do not send money until you've made sure the cheque is valid and the money is in your bank account.

​Also, copy-paste the first message or email you received fully in google search. Chances are there will be scammer warnings and blog posts like mine warning you that this is a scam.

Also, watch Jim Browning's educational videos on scammers. Helps a lot to learn all the different types of scams that exist online. Jim Browning is the Internet alias of a software engineer and YouTuber from Northern Ireland whose content focuses on scam baiting and investigating call centres engaging in fraudulent activities. He was interviewed by The New York Times, you can read it here

Other useful channels are ScammerRevolts , Trilogy Media , Scammer Payback , Malcolm Merlyn  , Pleasant Green

To my fellow artists, read these to learn about other types of art scams directed at artists:

https://renee-phillips.com/scams-aimed-at-artists/

https://renee-phillips.com/vanity-galleries/

https://www.agora-gallery.com/advice/blog/2017/05/25/how-to-recognize-art-scam/

I really appreciate everyone sending me screenshots of these scams so far and sharing their experiences, feel free to email me if you get another one at info@ivanabesevic.com or DM me on Instagram any time!

Thanks for reading this all-over-the-place-first-ever blog post from a non-blogger, hope it's useful!

Take care x

L.