security – Gerry Mooney Illustrating Dickens

Scamming an Artist – Part 3: Dude! The FBI!

I know many of you have been following this story, especially those who have come close to being victims themselves until they tickled the google and ended up right here at this blog. One of my new correspondents, Tom Hanlon, went the extra mile and actually made a complaint to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), and also, as of this writing, has made a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission at ReportFraud.ftc.gov .

FBI seal against a blue background with rays, representing the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Below is the FBI report in full, except for redacting some of Tom’s personal info. I won’t put links in here for the two earlier posts because they’re linked in the official report.

How to Scam a Commercial Artist

I’m taking a break from my Dickens projects to talk about a recent attempt to scam me as a commercial artist. While it seemed like a real job at first, there were warning signs along the way that just bemused me until the scam was revealed.

This job was a referral from a former artist acquaintance who I knew too many years ago to count, and we are now Facebook friends. He’s legit, I have no reason to think he was any more than an innocent dupe. But it spiraled pretty quickly!