#muse scam

[scam-alerts]

🚨Scammer Alert🚨 + 🔎Scam Exam(ination)🔍

Seen as: 'I'm feeling so inspired by your art/picture!' Scam Type: Muse Scam

1 - Description of this scam:

The muse scam is a variant of the fake check scam in which the scammer will contact the victim over social media and claim to want to use their image for an art project. The scammer will often use a stolen social media account to increase their credibility. They will offer a generous sum of money and offer to pay via check, and the victim is instructed to send money to the scammer for “materials” via an irreversible method. The victim is under the illusion that the funds cleared when the bank makes the money available thanks to current regulations. Usually the fake check deposit will be reversed in a few weeks, but it can also take several months. If you do not have the funds to cover the amount, your balance will go negative. Your bank will usually charge a fee for depositing a bad check, and your account may be closed depending on the severity of the scam. source (reddit)

Additional info about the muse scam. (from malwarebytes)

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Example account shown here: @muralmagicsworld (banned)

Accounts also running this scam: @craftpatch, @shadyduckgladiator emilyartlana emilyfanartist thoughtfulgraze rogerwil01

(Note: There are probably a lot of scammers running this scam. This post is mainly talking about the blog that I managed to find or were made aware of.)

2 - What this scam looks like.

Part 1: The request. (on a post made by a bot no less... lol)

A secondary (more recent) example of this request can be seen here:

The source of this is from this post by @blankwisher64 who gave me permission to use it. Thank you!

A third example can be seen here - Given by anonymous:

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Part 2: The blog an their posts.

The blog's earliest post was made on November 11th 2024

Using google lense (the photo icon you can use to look up an image on the internet) I was able to find these images linked to a youtube channel and an instagram account made by an artist known as Andreas Liss.

The woman in the first instagram post's name is credited, by the original artist, to be the lovely Anastasia Dmitrieva.

Where as the scammer... well.. They decided to call her... Jennifer.

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Final words: The muse scam is quite common and it's recently migrated from instagram to tumblr. If you are someone who posts pictures of yourself or your animals, always remember this: If someone tells you they're feeling 'inspired' and they'll draw you or your pet but you have to 'pay for art supplies' and they're willing to send you a $1000+ 'check/money order' and 'you can keep the rest' because they're feeling 'oh so generous'?

It is and always will be a scam.

Other helpful guides on spotting scams. (by @kyra45)

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Disclaimer: This post is only meant to serve as documentation and reference material so that others know: why this person is a scammer, and to provide more information about the scam they are running. I do not, in any way, endorse harassment or mass reporting these users. Only report posts related to asks, comments, or messages if you GET them or ones like them. Thank you.

[galacticghoste]

I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW CONFUSED I WAS BY THIS LIKE WHAT DO YOU MEAN VIOLATE MY PRIVACY?!

Anyways they gave a weird response so best guess it was a scam so yeah though i just post to warn anyone else?

Also its such a random choice of an post

(don't get me wrong i love this drawing but idk its not giveing something that would such a big inspiration)

[miaqc1]

Warning @/alanaalive tried to scam me with the same scam I had fallen prey before. The muse scam. 😡

[psychopomp-namine]

qiao ling obviously loves and trusts lu guang too but it is kinda funny to think about the context of her seeing cheng xiaoshi go to bridon with him.

like, that's her baby brother! her baby brother who has been lonely all his life and had no friends and has deep-seated abandonment issues that he has lived with for nearly a decade, who got into fights as a kid and whose kindness is exploitable and who lives alone in the photo studio.

and then suddenly, within the span of two months, he gains a friend he trusts soooo much that he wants to be "partners for life" with him. said friend helps out with his work and moves in together with him. and now cheng xiaoshi is literally sharing his clothes with him and they're going on an overseas trip together? she's just going to let her lonely brother go on a trip abroad with a man who miraculously showed up in his life to solve all his problems?

like, again, qiao ling loves and trusts lu guang for sure, but the optics of the situation is kinda funny. especially if she actually argues with cheng xiaoshi about not going to bridon, like the YE2 preview implies.

like, if you didn't know lu guang was a decent guy and if you take their bridon trip completely out of context, you'd think cheng xiaoshi was being scammed and lovebombed into speedrunning a dangerous relationship, and ran away to elope after a family argument 😭

[lucabyte]

Happy PMD Red is on NSO day. Sadly I don't think King the Skitty and Muse the Cyndaquil will be returning to finish up their adventure regardless.

[ariconditioner]

guys if troy, as a washed up celebrity, would canonically have a cameo he would ALSO have a jeremy renner app. the troy app. a complete scam of an app that’s just instagram but it’s ONLY TROY

[starlit-eudemonia]

If Leander and Sen are both a category of undead (Leander-a necromancer or Lich//Sen - a reanimated corpse) then I think it would be like a root, sprouting in two different ways. Sen’s would explore the storyline of dealing with grief, terminal illness themes, the price of immortality (negatively) and the value of medical consent. Whereas Leander will explore the loneliness of immortality, power hunger/greed, and the ideas of heroism and how they can be perverted/skewed to your own ideals and you essentially "lose the plot" of your code

[godsfavoritescientist]

a little glowing friend

[lokisasylum]

[lumilasi]

While it is a bit nerve wrecking to write something for a new fandom, I think I needed it, bc I was stuck with my other stories, and I suspect it was partially due to me needing a different type of characters/ dynamic to focus on for a change of pace. This'll probably help me forward the other ones as well eventually.

(So, thanks @spokelseskladden for convincing me to do this, you evil magnificent norwegian ghost man lol)

Also it seems for this jayvik fic, my chapter length is gonna be MUCH longer per chapter than normal, around 20-30 pages per chapter, when I typically keep it between 8-11. With the amount of drama you can get out of these two though, I'm not that surprised lmao

[werewolfbarista]

Hello! I need medication for life to prevent my lungs from collapsing, this implies permanent treatment with steroids, oxygen therapy, control of oxygen in the blood and antibiotics to prevent the development of bacteria in the lungs.

I'm afraid I have to insist on this because it may be the only way to get my treatment.

I need medication for life to keep my lungs from collapsing, this costs around $700 per month.

Things are really tough on me,I can’t afford. Please donate🖤

blog is 4 days old, all posts reblogged 4 days ago, "donations" post also from 4 days ago.

this is a scam🖤

if any of y'all get an ask or see a post circulating around from jovialtigertriumph, please block her and report her paypal

edit: she changed her url to @nuttywitchphantom

[muirneach]

well. i mean musetti nearly almost beat novak in rg AND it was during that match that novak got injured. so really he should he scared that he has to play muse next round

[miaqc1]

From this post, scammers to report and block!

@salibadati, @stais02. Same person, Tracer Artist.

@rogersgrey7, @randomfactalready77 & @seekforbid. Same Person, do the "Muse" fake e-check scam.

Also Pauldan008 on Discord. Might be the same person or a accomplice of Rogers.

[psychopomp-namine]

hey so. random thought. what are the odds that liu xiao was the client that approached qiao ling for the S1E1 case

[the-grove]

I feel like people are far too willing to call a Kickstarter(or similar crowdfunded project) a scam, and I think it comes from people treating a Kickstarter campaign as a pre-order for the items and not a way to provide funding for a project. TO be fair I think this happens on both the project manager side and and the funder side due to an emphasis on Backer Awards.(although this varies on how much this idea is emphasized from project to project). A Project failing to achieve its goals is bad, and choosing to never give your money to a company/person that failed to produce the product is a reasonable. But to me a scam is very purposefully something that is trying to take the money and run, or something that always intended to give a lesser quality product than was implied. Ideally every campaign should include a detailed listed of challenges to a campaign, now sometimes a challenge occurs that wasn't accounted for and that's also ok. But at the end of the day a Kickstarter campaign is about funding projects, getting rewards is a secondary aspect of the funding. Something failing to come into fruition or needing to make cuts in some manner due to unforeseen circumstances is unfortunate, bad and understandable if it makes you want to no longer contribute....but that doesn't make it a scam.

[doughyduo]

Actively selling crypto again, and actually making money on it because she’s scamming people and knows it.