Santana

🇺🇸Please share this as widely as possible – this is very important information.

Dear fellow artists, I’d like to raise a topic that I don’t often discuss here. It’s about scammers on Telegram in the art community. Those of you who used to be on Tumblr will probably know what I’m talking about, but for those who haven’t come across this, it will be very useful to know. Empty or half-empty accounts, usually in English, message the channel and try to commission artwork. They always follow a similar pattern: ‘Draw my dog/daughter/cat’, and often offer a budget of around $100😭😭

How the scam actually works: they ask for your PayPal details or any other bank account, as well as your email address. If you send it, you’ll receive a message, usually in your spam folder, supposedly from a banking app (look closely at the sender—it might say ‘Payqal’ instead of ‘PayPal’, which most people won’t check or notice): stating that you must confirm the payment for it to go through. DO NOT CLICK ON THESE LINKS. The best thing you can do is report the account, delete the chat and ignore such messages. They could obtain your account details and withdraw your money, which would not be very pleasant. So please, double-check who is ordering commissions from you, look out for patterns and be careful.

Good luck,