And $500 is suspiciously generous! I'm sure there's nothing untoward going on here! Let's get some more information...

... paying by checks, you say? I'm sure that, since you have no idea what country I'm in or what bank I use and what checks they will or won't accept, you'll be cashing the check, and then sending me my cut. Right?

Oh, honey. That is not how that works. That is not how any of that works.

Well? Anything to say?

Gosh.

Folks, this looks like a double-whammy of phishing, and the bounced check/cheque scam. If I give them my name and email address, I'm sure they have some kind of scraper that trawls the web for everything registered using those details, and then they'd just try to brute force the passwords, as well as trying to access the email address itself.

The cheque boucning scam is quite a simple one: you sell A Thing. The scammer pays you using a cheque, but the cheque is for too much, so they say that's ok, rather than me write a new one, why not just cash it and send me the excess via bank transfer? So you do that, but when you cash a cheque, the balance shows as increased before the money has actually landed. If you send money out before being sure the cheque has cleared, you risk sending money that you don't have.

Block @autumnartistsworld on sight. Report them if you have the spoons.

And if someone offers you $500 just for the privilege of using your selfie as a reference? That is too good to be true, my loves.

Oh look, a scammer.

We aren't stupid.

If you can't just help without extra steps you're a scammer.

None of the kind people on Tumblr who have helped us before said any of this shit, they just sent the help.

Hi. Yeah. Don’t do this.

Just got a person trying to scam me claiming they’d send me a front and back picture of a check for me to deposit into my bank account.

This is a very real and common scam people try to use where they send you a fake check and asks you deposit it to your bank account, and then request it back before the bank processes it as fake, either in cash, gift cards, or a personal check.

DO NOT, BY ANY MEANS, GIVE YOUR PERSONAL BANK INFO OR LOCATION INFORMATION TO STRANGERS.

And ESPECIALLY don’t deposit checks into your bank account from them, no matter how real the check may look. I gave this person several safe options on how to donate and they completely ignored them.

If you feel something isn’t right, listen to that feeling and be cautious.

Thanks to my bankers. (A cautionary tale)...

Since I am a Justice of the Peace it is not unusual for total strangers to contact me out of the air about performing their wedding ceremony. However, the Contact dealt only in texts, no phone calls. Was I available to do a wedding Feb 2nd in Waterbury? What was my fee? They were out of state (No, you do not have to live in CT to get married in CT), could they mail a check to my address? yeah, yeah, yeah.

Then a week later they told me that the person paying for their videographer lumped his fee and mine together into one check - was that O.K.? (Immediately made me suspicious). However, that was over a week ago and I have heard nothing since. However, Monday the USPS told me I had a package from NJ arriving this week.

As of this a.m. I still had no check - if I didn't get one in the mail I was going to text him that 'no emails, no texts, NO CHECK = NO WEDDING'. When I received notice that my 'package' had been delivered, I went to the mailboxes to find a 2-day priority envelope with a check made out to me for $950. No sooner than I had gotten it in my apartment that I received a text asking if the check had been delivered, and when I cashed it (after taking my fee out of it) to contact him that I had {Does this 'cloak-&-dagger' shit send up red flags for you? It did for me}.

So, I took the $950 check to the bank and when I told the tellers what weirdo stuff surrounded this check, they said immediately: 'This Is A SCAM; we see them all the time.' So they called the credit union the check was written against and was told the check was totally bogus, and that the credit union had been receiving calls from banks around the country about bogus checks. So, first I texted the Contact and said that the bank was going to put a 3-day hold on the check and it would not be cashed in time for the wedding - next plan? After they responded I told them flat out - 2 banks have told me this check is totally bogus, so you need to find yourself another Justice of the Peace. When they got indignant, I told them 'the check is bogus and has been shredded' (I lied).' I have not heard from them after that.

I did call the police, but after talking with the officer, I decided that since I did NOT cash the check, I did not lose any money, so filing a report at this point was probably useless. However, if the Contact tries to contact me again, I will call the police again because I still have the check and the envelope it was mailed in.