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Instagram Scam: I Want to Use Your Photos for Mural or Painting and Steal Your Money

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The latest scam I’ve been getting on Instagram are people who love my pics so much that they want to make them into a mural. Sometimes, it’s a painting. But either way all I need to do is accept a check for a large amount, keep a little for myself and then send them the extra for supplies. Art supplies can get pricey you know!

Of course, it’s just another fake check scam, and not even a very convincing one. So do not ever accept a check for more than it should be, and then send a stranger money! I feel like that should be common sense, but they wouldn’t keep trying it if people weren’t falling for it. Click here to read more about different types of Fake Check Scams from the FTC. Read on to see what happens when you reply back to the scammers and give them a little bit of a hard time.

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mural scam

I Want to Pay to Use Your Photos!

It starts with a nice complimentary message about how pretty your Instagram feed is, or how inspiring your photos are. So great that they want you to be their muse. The scammer I’m using as an example wanted to make my photos into a mural. I got this same exact message last week, so getting this from another person alerted me this was a scam going around.

text from instagram scammer
text from instagram scammer monica
text from instagram mural art scammer

One you reply back that they are interested, they will explain they will be sending you a check for a high dollar amount. This person was going to send me $2000, but once I got on board, they later upped it to $5000 because they wanted to use two photos. Lucky me!

This is where they start asking for personal information. I gave them an e-mail I never use for anything, the wrong bank name, and name of one of the witches on Hocus Pocus as my name. I kept asking them details about this amazing mural, but they don’t seem to have a lot of details for me.

scammer message fishing for details
scammer on instagram
artists scam

After this, they started asking for my phone number, so I gave them a fake one. I wanted to make sure they had no usable information just in case they were going to try and get into my bank account. The main part of this scam isn’t to steal your info through, it’s to steal your money by having you send it to them yourself.

Pretty soon I had myself a very realistic looking image of a $5,000 check, written out to an imaginary witch. They e-mailed it to me as my “allowance” and requested I deposit it right away. I’m publishing the photo of the check with some stuff crossed out, because it’s a fake, but it could contain info obtained through identity-theft.

If I did try and deposit it, it may actually clear. And then I’d need to send them their part of the check. And then that’s when I’d be losing out, because pretty soon the bank would be coming after me to get back their real money to replace the fake check money.

fake check from fake check scam

Avoid Fake Check Scams

This fake check scam also comes in the form of people “accidentally” sending you too much money for an online purchase. Then they will ask you to refund the extra. Then later you find out the check is fake, and you can’t get your money back, and you have to pay the bank back.

So NEVER EVER EVER accept a check and then send a refund. Also never give out your bank info to strangers online. Don’t even give them your personal info like e-mails or phone numbers that you use for things like banking or credit cards. The less info they have to use, the better.

Also, don’t send anybody a screenshot of a log-in code! That’s a whole different Instagram scam that’s getting a lot of people lately.

So What Happened with My Fake Check?

They kept telling me I needed to deposit ASAP, so I asked them a bunch of silly questions and then pretended I deposited it. Then they kept telling me I needed to Venmo them the money, or use cash app. Unfortunately, I don’t use those (at least not for scammers, lol) so I told them I’d need to use Paypal and it will take a few days to get transferred. My scam artist was so sad, because she wanted to get to work right away!

She helpfully suggested I just go to the store and get an Amex gift card for $2000. So suddenly my cut went from $1000, to $3000! I’m just making money like crazy over here.

I asked repeatedly for her e-mail but she didn’t want to give it up. She then started trying to get me to hook a debit card up to my bank, or use Zelle or Paypal through there. I just continued to pretend to be confused as to how any of that works, so then she got mad and started threatening to call my bank and reverse the check I never deposited.

She got very nasty, threatening that my bank would close my account and that I wouldn’t be able to get a bank account anymore. And then she’d call the police and I’d lose my job. The threats kept escalating, and it was getting close to dinner time, so I finally let her know I was faking it. Funny thing was, she didn’t understand and still kept threatening that the bank would close my account. And by “my account” of course that meant Sarah Sanderson’s account. I even asked her if she’d seen Hocus Pocus and said I’d given her the name of my Halloween costume. So finally, I just sent a message letting them know they are a terrible person, waited until it was read, and then blocked the account.

The account mentioned may still be active and trying to scam other people. If you get a chance, report @jamieson6594 for fraud. Or maybe send them a message and see if you can get them to send checks out to the other Sanderson sisters, lol.

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About the Author

Candy Keane is a digital content creator and long-time cosplayer, most well-known for being on the cover of the Star Wars documentary Jedi Junkies. After making costumes professionally for over a decade, she now writes about geek culture and mom life, and continues to cosplay for fun, while sharing her love of costumes on Instagram @SewGeekMama. Her first children’s book, I’m Going to My First Comic Convention, was published in 2020 and won a Story Monsters Approved award for Excellence in Literature.

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Published by Candy Keane | Geek Mamas

Mom, Blogger at GeekMamas.com, Wearer of Costumes, Maker of Geeky Things, and Author of I'm Going to My First Comic Convention

241 replies »

  1. I almost fell for this! I decided to look into it last minute and after reading your article realized I was being scammed. They sent me the check through my email but I didn’t do anything after that, they only have my name and email. I blocked them on insta and changed my gmail password. Is there anything else I should do? Should I be worried? Thank you for informing us, I feel dumb for almost doing this 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

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    • Don’t feel dumb! You can tell by the comments that many many people have fallen for it. It’s so easy to get sucked in when somebody makes you feel good, and it’s exciting have someone want to use your images for art work.
      It sounds like you’ve done what you can do, the only thing now is just to keep an eye on your accounts for the next week or so for anything fishy. You should be totally fine though!

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      • Hi. Should I be worried. I almost fell for this and I just received a cheque in my name. I sent her my name and email address already but I bluntly refused to give my phone number. What should I do next please? I just got a cheque and I’m glad I saw this post right now

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        • As long as you do not deposit the fake check, you have nothing to be worried about. I also got the check but did not deposit. They will start threatening you, but just block them. I never heard anything from them again after blocked.

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  2. I can’t believe I thought someone random wanted to draw me lol but it did seem fishy “I kept saying I don’t need to get paid you can keep all the money” and they kept insisting i get paid for this portrait 😂 but the photo in this article is the script the person used in me too

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      • so if I did follow through with the check, just because I wanted to see if it would go through, but I didn’t give them anything back am I fine as long as I’m cautious, or am I screwed?

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        • The checks are fraud (faked with stolen account info), so when it is eventually discovered by your bank, the funds will be removed from your account, and you may be assessed a fine for the fraudulent check if you haven’t notified your bank. Knowingly depositing the fake check without notifying the bank would be considered a check fraud crime on your part as well.
          So it could be very bad if you don’t let the bank know and tell them it was a check scam. You can leave out the part about knowing it was fraud and just tell them you discovered it was a scam after the deposit.

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  3. the moment i left her on seen and she wrote me back “ma’am?” i knew it was fake 😂they speak like robots, it’s a giveaway. if there’s nothing i have to do, why keep contacting me when i said i was interested for free. what more is there to say?? the messages i got where verbatim of what was said in those screenshots lol

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    • So my sister fell for this, she is joining the army and they found that information and told her they will fire her. They said they will close her bank account and hack her social media. I told her to change passwords on everything. Should she be worried still?

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  4. I felt for the fake cheque but I still didn’t send her money back. It felt way too weird. I’ll contact my bank for this. I’m scared of what might happen.
    I also really wanted my picture to be credited. Sad to know there’s a lot of scammers in this world

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  5. I just received a DM on IG from Sarah Michaels, same scam. I figured it was a scam, but I didnt know what they were trying to scam me into. Not wanting to waste time going back and forth with the scammer, I googled it and found this. Thank you for posting this, very helpful! At one point I told the scammer I’d have to check with the model and get her permission for the painting and that I wasn’t home. She replied “Its not a problem whether you are home or not”. I was just playing along, having fun. True sign of a scam/scammer is when they are rushing you to make a move.

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  6. I just ran into this scam, accepted the money but before I sent them anything I knew this sounded hecka fishy. I didn’t sent them any money but they were sending nastyyy messages. Is that pretty normal would you say? I contacted my bank to have the checks disputed and taken out of my account

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    • Yes, if you look through the comments here, you’ll see a lot of people have gotten very nasty messages, even death threats and photos of dead people as threats. The mural scam people are the worst or all the scams go as far as this type of harassment. But that’s all they can do, so block them on all accounts and you’ll be fine.

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  7. I got one from Justine Cham, I thought it was weird right away but I wanted to play along and see where it goes. Great news, I’m getting two $500 payments this week lmao. They asked if they could use my pics and I was like yeah whatever and then they told me about the money and I knew right away it was too easy to be true. Haven’t responded yet to them because I’m not sure how far I want to take it… Once they started giving me details and talking about their “client” it was pretty easy to see the deal would be fake because they don’t have a very convincing account or any other social media/websites that are linked to the Insta account they’re messaging from. Also, only one of the pictures on their account has an artist’s signature, while the others are conveniently taken from angles that block out the signed corner. No artist getting paid that much for one portrait is going to have an account like that and no other accolades on the internet lol

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  8. HEY ALSO BLOCK AND REPORT @Lordofclout33, otherwise known as Elizabeth. I kept insisting she could use my image with my consent and of no charge to me. She was like “You need to pay me” huh???? “I will send it to your bank and you will pay it back to me for the painting and supplies. ” … Your client would be sending the money to you for one, and two why are you sending me a check when I said I don’t wanna be paid, and third and last of all I don’t use banks and you keep insisting on me using a bank for you to get paid by the client ????? As an artist myself, I’m for damn sure the client pays the artist directly online or in person. + emailing checks??? You just don’t do that???? Like???

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  9. Hi I just replied to a message right now that says “Hello,I really like some of the posts on your profile and I’d like to use one of ‘em as my muse for a painting I wanna work on for a client and if you’ll let me you will of course be compensated” And for the check part, it’s the same LOL. I never knew that this would be a scam! I’m still playing along on the messages lol. Didn’t give any information

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  10. Thanks for the article , such an odd scam. I am just trolling them saying dirty nasty things to them hitting on them now and they are not very happy with me LMAO, while they are taking “a couple of weeks to complete my painting”….. This account messaging me is named weta qlia , so warn about that one as well. These people are the worst kind of human beings.

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  12. I just got the IDENTICAL messages from @sarah_mccoy_12. Assuming its a stolen account from an actual artist because there are tons of portrait paintings on her profile.

    I took your advice and filed a report with the FTC, but it said they cant respond to individual reports, they just keep the data in case the person gets caught

    Thanks for helping others with this article – it confirmed for me that it is in fact a scam.

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  14. Man, I fell for it. I should have looked it up before. I knew something was fishy but since the check sort of went through I thought maybe it was real. But then she said she was going to send another $2000 and I would get 1,000 from it which at first she said $500 so then I was like as heck no, it’s a scam. I blocked her on insta and I blocked her phone number as well. I will be contacting my bank to let them know that was a fraudulent check. She also kept trying to rush me and would say “dear.” That’s how you know it’s weird.

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  16. I received the same exact message from rochelle_art65. I played a long for a little bit but felt like it was a scam. I haven’t responded again. I will probably block and report to IG. Thank you for posting this.

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  17. Please block and ignore @inkedcreation__ as well if they DM you!! This just happened to me, I had a weird feeling but gave him the benefit of the doubt, until he mentioned the check being written in my name sent to me email, lol. But his profile is actually very convincing, it looks real/legit, and there weren’t spelling and grammatical errors in his messages! Although they did pretty much match the script shown here.

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  18. Just happened to me right now by a @samantha_lise112 almost fell for it until the “You’ll recieve the check” 🚩🚩 red flag alert. And when I questioned her why she isn’t receiving the check she said she had a bank dispute on her bank account and didn’t want MY pay to be affected! Went to Google and found this! THANK YOU FOR THIS POST MA’AM 🫡

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  19. So I got caught in this further than I wanted and already took the check and sent some money back. Can I call the bank and have everything just canceled? I’m scared what will happen

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  20. Just received request to use my pic from “raphael_noahgallery”. Not falling for it, but man I’d love to act like I was since I’m laid up recovering from surgery. Sounds like a good way to kill time. Lol

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  21. Oh no! This has just happened to me! I can’t believe I didn’t look into this! Someone by the name of mariah_art075 asked me for this! What do I do if I have already deposited the check(s) and paid someone 400!?!??

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  23. I got my scan message on Tik Tok. She pushed me over to IG fast. I was an art minor in college and smelled fish as soon as she said she was going to do an oil painting and mail me my “copy” within five days. Girl didn’t even research how long oil paints take to harden enough to be stable enough to ship, even then if it’s thick it may never actually dry. This was at the very beginning of the convo, so I did a quick search to see if this was a new scam or if it’s been around. That’s where I found your post! So now that I knew this wasn’t a new scam, I had a little fun.
    If this was a new scam I wanted to give out fake info to get more detail on the scam to post about it and warn others, but you’ve done it already so thanks ♥️
    She was sooooooo mad at me by the end of me asking questions and wondering how she was going to get paid or if I had to sign contracts, etc. I of course went off on her, called her a scammer, and used some choice words when she got to the point of pretending she was going to move on and get a new “muse”. Reported on both IG and TT and blocked. Another good day reporting scammers 😂

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  24. Thank youuu so much for this. I knew it was a scam and still proceed, foolish me. I looked into this last minute, and they got me and now I will be contacting my bank asap.

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  25. Got the same EXACT message!!! Almost fell for it but didn’t get past actually sending me a “check” through email. Thought it was too good to be true and just found this after a quick google search. Got a little info out of me but had a gut feeling and now I’m here.🤦‍♀️ Account Name: smith_art12. Under the name Tommy Smith. Already reported and blocked so now just waiting to see what happens.

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  26. Just got hit with this scam from Instagram user @lynley__paintings_ !! Same exact messages, I almost fell for it because her Instagram account appears local to my area with tagged photos and everything. But I’m thinking whoever’s account it was got hacked. Just told the scammer since she lives a town over from me, we can just meet up so she can give me my $500 in cash 😂 Thanks for the warning!

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  28. I feel so stupid right now. When I first got the message I thought it was legit. As of rn I’m pretty sure they have access to my personal info and they won’t stop sending me threats that they will arrest me and flag my account. No money was ever sent, Zelle is amazing and blocked the transaction. I’m never going to listen to anyone on the internet I don’t know.

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    • Block them every way you can! They can be really nasty with the threats, but that’s all they are. They told me the FBI was coming after me and I’d never be able to get a job again, lol.
      And yes, don’t ever trust anyone online without researching them first!

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      • Thank you for this info, thankfully I was able to lock my bank account before any transactions went through. They’re still texting me through, they’ve contacted me through 5 different numbers as of this far. Scams are dumb.

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  29. Just got that today. Wanna get my profile pic for mural. I am glad I found this post, almost give my name out. Only given out one of my email that has no connection to any of my personal info. And for the people who still have doubt. If a stranger encourage you to get money for a thing that you felt unreal. Don’t even let that get into your head. Just block it ASAP, or they can see your followers and try on them instead.

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  30. This actually happened to me this week. This Instagram account texted me out of no where  and paint it and at first I did think it was scam and I told her, but she told me that I can trust her and said not everything is a scam and she’s done this for 8 years. So after we chatted for a while I decided to give it a shot. So she told me what to and asked me to give her my phone number and asked me what bank I have so her sponsor can text me and email me the checks to me to send half the payment to her and keep $500 like she promised. So when I did that the sponsor texted me and sent me the checks one by one and I went into my bank and deposited them one by one. After I did that I told them I did that and sent some screenshots like they asked and I texted back the scammer from instagram and she asked me to send some money to her supplier so the supplier can buy some art supplies she needed to do her project and I did. After that all I had to do was wait until the checks got deposited into my account, but a couple hours later I started to get a bad feeling and started to think this was scam after all. Because who would have so much money ? So I called my bank and told them to cancel the deposits and they did and after they did I texted back the scammer and told her what I did. When I told her about me canceling the deposits she got pretty upset and asked me why did I do that and I told her my reason and told her I wanted my money back. So we talked for a while and she told me that I made things a little complicated for her to finish her project and that I should’ve trusted her and not have cancelled the deposits. After another chat I started to feel bad and decided to go back on the project and she sent me a picture of what she has done. It was very pretty and she told me to send another payment to another random from Apple Pay and i asked why and pretty much it was like a apology payment I guess and I decided to go along with it. After I did that she told me her sponsor was gonna email some checks again to deposit in my bank and when I got them I did what she said. The next day I got a email from my bank saying that they cancelled the deposits and shut down my deposit history. When that happened I told them all about it and told me not to worry and they said they would send my money back today. But o wasn’t sure how because I didn’t have cash app. So I asked the scammer if she could send it to Apple Pay and she said she had Apple Pay, but she had to pay for her card. So she asked me to give her a little money to help and I decided to do it just to be nice and get this done with and have my money. She told me she would texted me if her Apple Pay works and she was able to send my refund, but she never did and I started to text her and tried to call her, but she never replied back me. The next day I texted her and told her I felt and she started to get upset with me for what I said and got offended pretty much. But she promised me she would send my money this time and I asked how and she asked me if I had ID me account I think it was called and I said no. So I told her I would create one so she can send my money back ASAP, but while I was doing that I was having trouble and told her. So she texted me that her agent would help me and when he did he asked to send me a picture of my state ID and SSN I sent pics of that for him, but I was still having trouble making my account. I texted the agent and told him what was going on and we started to chat a while until he started to ask me some questions that were a bit too personal and I told him I needed a break and the last thing he told me was “Okay but lemme tell you if you really think you could block me or stop talking to me then you will hate it for yourself” and when he said that I started to feel threatened and scared. That’s when I finally realized that this was definitely a scam now. So I blocked the instagram account and the numbers that I sent money and messages too. At first I tried to fix this myself by tasking my friends for help, calling and ID me and talking to my bank. Pretty much they all told me to tell my family and see if they would help me and I’ll be honest I was too scared to tell them because I knew they would be so disappointed, but I had no choice because I know I couldn’t fix this myself. When I told my family they were all very mad at me, but they were there by my side to help take care of what happened to me. I had to make a new bank account and called social security and get things sorted out from there. I even had to change my phone number because I started to get No Caller ID phone calls and scary threatening messages. Like one said “The artist that I blocked has paid to kill you. So for your safety you better not do something stupid like call the cops.” And another message saying I better text back and pretending to be a lawyer of the scammer. They even sent me a video of someone shooting someone. I started to get more scared that they would come after me and my family. So I showed the messages to my family and they could tell right away that video they sent me was a fake and that they were trying to scare me. So after I got everything taken care of and got my new phone number I definitely learned that scammers are being more good at scamming people like me and scaring us to get our money. I gotta be more careful and you all should too. I won’t lie I haven’t got much sleep ever since I got scammed and I would even have nightmares 😣. My family and people from the bank would tell me that this just doesn’t happen to me. It happens to everyone. They were trying to make me feel better and I’ll admit I did feel a bit better, but this gonna take me a long time to heal from. I just hate it when people use me and all I want to do is be kind to others. This was pretty traumatizing experience for me and I’m still upset with myself. But I definitely learned my lesson and have to learn to get off my phone and spend more time with my family. Also be careful who I become friends work online. So please watch out for that scam and be careful on who you’re friends with online. I don’t want you all to make the same mistake I did 😞. I lost $300 from this scam and couldn’t get any of my money back.

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  31. We get that kind of scam on Deviantart too. I suppose it happen on every media that allows you to share your drawing…

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  32. Pingback: The Mural Painting Art Scam is Now on TikTok – Geek Mamas

  33. unfortunately I was approached the same way. This is how I handled it. Keep an eye on how this person goes about this so that you can spot discrepancies if you are ever approached the same way. Since I cannot add screenshots, I have copied and pasted the messages.

    from supposedly an Aria Riddler, 1.1k followers and has only 3 posts on the account.

    Them- Hey, I really like your profile and your face, I would make such an amazing mural out of it! If you don’t mind you could be my inspiring muse for an art project(the authenticity of human facial emotion and expressions) plus you will totally get paid for it as well

    me- Absolutely. I do art as well so you are welcome to paint/draw or whatever me. ☺

    them- Thank you for your reply! I was really looking forward to working with you. I was thinking about using your profile picture for the Art piece if that is fine by you?

    me- Yes absolutely ☺

    them- I would like you to send me the picture if you don’t mind

    me- Yep. I’mma go find it really quick *image*

    them- I would be doing an oil on canvas , 50cm x 50cm portrait painting using your face as my inspired muse for reference. I’ll send you a soft copy of the art work when completed.

    (suspiciously small?)

    me- Alright. I look forward to seeing your work. ☺

    them- I’ll make sure I do a great job!, I’d like to discuss payment terms now if you’re ready.

    me- hm. What are you thinking?

    them- My Client would be issuing you a check for $2500 while your cut from that would be $500, I will use the remaining to get the Painting materials and also take the remaining profit for my service. Hopefully, that should be encouraging enough 🙂

    Me- I am sorry but I cannot accept. You do not need to pay me to paint me. You are welcome to do it for free. However I will not be accepting any checks or anything like that. Nor will I be the one to pay you anything, seeing as you are the one who approached me. I am aware of scams that use these same tactics and I will not allow myself to fall under the same misfortune as others. I appreciate you wanting to paint me and you are welcome to do so if you still wish, but I will not be accepting any checks or pay you for your requested work. Unfortunately it is scams like these that make the art industry a very difficult profession and I will not be lured into a scam. Thank you for your interest. I hope your work goes smoothly. Goodbye

    i have not received any further messages from this person. Be mindful of any offers you get weather that be artistic or business offers. Even though they seem good, usually the truth is it’s too good to be true. Stay safe out there folks. ☺

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