online scams – 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.

Scamming an Artist – Part 2

Some of you have already seen my original post on this story, first published on Nov. 18, 2024, but I’m keeping it alive because it’s important as information, and as an educational tool. Since I published it, I’ve received emails from eight other creatives who almost got scammed, except they paused to do some online research and quickly ended up at my post.

For this post I’m simply publishing all eight emails, last names deleted for simplicity (though some said, sure, use my name) so I don’t have to comb through all their responses.