#scammer callout

[sharklovespink]

⚠️SCAMMER CALL OUT⚠️

(Pls reblog to prevent artists from falling for this scam!)

Hey guys. I know this isn’t the thing I usually post, but I’ve been texted by a NFT „buyer“. They offered me whopping $3500 for a random doodle. To me it was very fishy, the price, the artwork they chose, etc. So I did some research online and saw that this scam is very common. They dote on artists, because they know that artists don’t know about NTFs.

I don’t wanna call out innocent people, this is why I made some reasearch. The person on the picture they use as banner is actually an artist of the name Joanna Sokolowska, and I believe that it’s not the artist who owns this account. They forgot to crop the website tag out of the picture lmao.

The scammers @ is @legendaryobjectdelusion

Here are some screenshots to prove my claim:

I suggest to block or report them if this user is dms you. If it turns out that this user is the person in the picture, and isn’t scamming artists, then I will take down this post. But until then, be wary!

I also found the artists website (the woman in the banner) Again, I don’t believe this artist Joanna Sokolowska is the scammer. I think the scammer used her picture to appear legit.

Stay safe

your SharkLoves Pink

[crippled-peeper]

[mommyhonda]

@junkosblunt IS A BROKE SLUT

how fucking dare you ban me from ur godamn server THREE TIMESSSSSSS even with my secret identity, no reason! first reason is because i dont feel sexual attraction to ugly fat manly women (which is weird ur enforcing that on me, bc im an innocent minor girl), second is bc of that pedophile incel twink kirbyss44, and the third time is because I FORGOT TO PAY YOU?? BOOOOOOOOOOO FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCKING HOOOOO how dare you ban THE mommymio from ur server, i was trying to be kind to people and get along but NO you come and ruin it all bc of ur petty ass tendencies. if you dont unban me in 4 hours something will happen.... watch out you delinquent scammer femcel before you get doxxed and raided. also we all know ur a closeted proshipper

[cute-girls-from-vns-anime-manga]

https://www.tumblr.com/cute-girls-from-vns-anime-manga/767278707070173184/anime-feeder-link-source?source=share

Pretty sure that's AI

OH AND THE "Source link" DIRECTS PEOPLE TO A TELEGRAM GROUP RATHER THAN AN ARTISTS PAGE, PIXIV, TWITTER OR HELL EVEN DANBOORU?! CHECKED OUT THE BLOG THE POST CAME FROM AND THE REST OF THEIR SOURCES LINK THE SAME.

PLEASE IF YOU SEE THE BLOG @anime-feeder ON YOUR DASH OR ARE ALREADY FOLLOWING IT TAKE DIRECT ACTION LIKE I JUST DID REPORT AND BLOCK IT AS A BOT AND SCAMMER ACCOUNT.

Thank you anon for bringing this to my attention, as I would like to keep my dash as free as possible from both AI art and Scammers!

[defsiarte]

Another one. PayPal name is Doreen Nanjala

How to tell if someone’s a scammer

[jluvswicked2]

@lena-nillkimcfv Babygirl, why don’t you message me directly? My inbox and asks are open.

Let me guess what the commission is… You want me to draw your pet, your best friend, your partner, or a portrait of you and you’re going to offer me a lot more than I usually charge for commissions. But the ONLY way you can pay me is if I send you half of the money through PayPal and once that goes through, you (or a wealthy relative) will pay me back what I sent you and the agreed on commission price.

Does that sound about right?

I may be off the mark, but seeing as I get this exact message or a variant of it from other mostly blank profiles EVERY time I post art, I really doubt it. And I’m ashamed to say I fell for this exact scam early last year because I was desperate for money and their offer initially seemed legit. They got $200 off of me that left me with $20 to my name. Thankfully I got some legit commissions and my fiancé and I weren’t evicted from our home.

A warning to artists who do commissions: The client has to pay YOU, no matter the circumstances. If they can’t pay a down payment or the full amount when you both agreed the payment would be processed or have the audacity to ask YOU for money for you to draw them something, BIG RED FLAG.

If you get one of these portrait commissions, reverse-Google search the photo they send. It may lead you to a Facebook or Instagram with similar profiles, but there may also be more than one profile with that photo. Scroll through those profiles and the profile of the person who puts this kind of note on your work. If it looks like it was just made less than a week ago and has generic shit shared or reblogged, you *might* have a scammer. You might not. But if it feels scammy, it’s probably scammy. Which, looking at this person’s profile, it feels scammy.

Anyway, yes I’m open for commissions. But not for people who think I was born yesterday. If you’d like one, message me directly! I would love to draw your OC or DnD character or fanart of your favorite character, or even a cartoon version of you and your partner or pet. But, unless I’m commissioning you, I will never send you money.

[ramblesincloud]

headsup this blog is entirely for subjects i don't want to put on my main aswell

[sundayeleith]

Call out : Toma is a scammer.

tldr : My (now former) friend, TS fandom member and artist known as Toma @tomato-arts owes me almost 1K USD and promised to pay me back only to ghost me.

Turns out she lied about why she needed the money I gave her recently, and probably about other things, using her status as my friend and fellow fandom member to get money out of me and run with it. She also tried to scam her commissioners (me included) by making them pay for a commission and never delivering, but was callout out in January for it.

In this google document I detail the timeline and events that led to the current situation while also bringing receipts. Please do NOT harass any of the people mentioned (by name or not) including Toma herself.

Please reblog this post as much as possible.

[ogdit]

This Post is by someone that wants to remain anonymous, they DM'd me this and asked me to post

The callout campaign against Kagebros has gone WAY too far. The lengths these people have gone to violate someone’s boundaries and privacy in order to “warn” people is incredibly excessive and is dealing horrible damage to their mental health and wellbeing. It needs to fucking stop.

The situation has spiraled completely out of control, spurred on by people who would rather side with a proud AI artist than have a civilized, adult discussion about tracing. Said AI artist has a history of attempting to ruin Kagebros’ credibility, spreading disinformation and rumors about them and their nonprofit charity zines, now going as far as to allegedly incite people to nonconsensually take photos of them at their booth at TFcon Baltimore, and block-evading their socials in order to find more posts to pick apart.

As they have stated already, Kagebros never had ANY intention to scam people, which understandably doesn’t change how those affected may feel. That being said, they could have very easily traced over things without altering them in any way at all, like many others within the convention vending sphere have blatantly done without a callout from these same people who care so much about “calling out tracing”. There tends to be a gray area in the realm of tracing techniques within the art industry (especially professionally), and there is plenty of merit for their actions to be criticized. As they’ve stated, they were under the impression that Official artwork/figures were okay to trace over and alter, which they now know to avoid doing so in the future. Even if the details and credibility of the piece can be scrutinized, they still made a conscious effort to alter the pieces in question to be more original.

Although said effort may not be enough for most, they now KNOW that. End of story. They can't immediately change the pieces they had available for sale, and they should be showing change through their future pieces and actions, which is something that’s up for judgment by anyone. And yet the people starting this have needlessly dragged it on, inciting others to keep spreading the accusations to further audiences, leading to more harassment.

Seafoamsol had admittedly unblocked Kagebros and “offered” to have a talk with them about the situation, but their own intentions are extremely questionable, as a conversation should have been the first priority, rather than a callout post. They assumed Kagebros’ intentions without giving them a single chance to address it themselves before the callout, and are now going forward with the narrative of them being a scammer.

Again, if they truly were concerned, they could have unblocked them and had a conversation before the callout was made, instead of assuming their intentions were to deceive people.

The situation is very nuanced, meaning there's a lot of points to be acknowledged on both sides in order to come to a conclusion, which could have happened peacefully if adults just had a civil discussion with each other. There is a justifiable talk to be had here, and reasonable changes to be made, but this can’t be accomplished productively if people continue to jump to conclusions and assume intentions. This has done nothing–and WILL do nothing–but hurt people, if this behavior doesn’t stop. mistakes will be made, lessons will be learned. Please look at this situation in its entirety before coming to your own conclusions based on assumptions made by people with evidently questionable motives and a history of causing problems for others and driving them out of the community. 

Thank you for reading.

[dumb-dumb-mander]

Please be careful of the scammer "desdenables"/"desdenables2" over BlueSky and Twitter

They stole the art of @/diesvitae and if the "bot talk" wasn't enough they stopped to answer as soon as I say "no" and have no art to show

EDIT ; BlueSky post/callout version here too

[neechees]

Raisedeyebrowemojii Scamming information post

So as some of you know, it's been revealed that @raisedeyebrowemojii was a scammer, and for those of you that don't know, I'm sorry you had to find out this way. This is going to be an information post on raisedeyebrowemojii's scamming, lies, the evidence, and where they stole from, and the debunking of all their claims as comprehensively as possible to help the people they scammed and manipulated get some closure, and hopefully to provide insight on how you might spot them again.

I carried out an investigation on the now confirmed scammer, and now deactivated user @blktransdyke, who deleted within hours of my callout post. On that post I connected blktransdyke as being the same person behind raisedeyebrowemojii due to the information both of them had posted for alleged fundraisers, which you can see in the post here. For a short recap, both blktransdyke and raisedeyebrowemojii "Jay" both had the exact same story of allegedly being trans/homeless/disabled and posted photos of the exact same brown tabby cat named "Trouble", both claiming that it was their "best friend's cat" and raisedeyebrowemojii created a patreon for Trouble the cat, only for me to find that Trouble the cat is a hyperpopular cat vlogging/fanpage with 42K followers on facebook, and both of these blogs stole from this page and neither of them were affiliated with this famous facebook.

Moving on, with some help, ive also found more evidence that raisedeyebrowemojii was a scammer. I know many people were already convinced by the callout post I already did, but I think it's important to debunk a lot of raisedeyebrowemojii's claims due to the fact that so many people thought they were genuine, that they had died, and due to the fact that they stole pretty much every detail of their alleged life from somewhere else, and I can prove it, so I want to clear things up, and maybe allow some people to gain peace in the knowledge that "Jay" did not die, and was never in danger of dying to begin with.

The rest of this post will be under the cut because again, this is going to get long. I encourage everyone who was approached by or donated to raisedeyebrowemojii to reblog to help get the word out, thank you. Image descriptions will be available in alt text.

For starters, raisedeyebrowemojii went by the name "Jay", and on the donation posts of theirs (scams), they used the paypal name "Jay Baldwin", and Jay claimed to be disabled (allegedly they had tourettes, autism, cerebral palsey, were deaf, in a wheelchair, had a terminal kidney disease, and allegedly other undisclosed disabilities), Canadian, that they lived in the city of Toronto (in Ontario, Canada), and a trans lesbian. Screenshots for that below

Misuse of terminology & racefaking

Let's talk about their bio first. I suspect that the scammer behind this blog is neither Black nor Canadian, due to the fact that, as I mentioned in this post, 1. Black Canadians don't really refer to themselves as "African American" as much here in Canada, partly due to the fact that a lot of Black Canadians actually have roots from the Caribbean & not directly from Africa or America, 2. "Jay" claimed to be Canadian but also said they had an uncle & grandparents still living in South Africa, which means they're implying they're either a first or second generation African Canadian immigrant, so why would they call themselves "African American" if they have no national/ethnic ties to America, and they are Canadian? So, like the blktransdyke blog, who i proved is most likely the same person as raisedeyebrowemojii, both of these blogs are using incorrect/strange terminology for the ethnicities they claim to be, thus indicating racefaking and a falsified Nationality.

Falsified Nationality

Here I also have reason to believe this person is not Canadian, or in the very least, did not live in the city of Toronto, or likely the province of Ontario. Partly due to the evidence ive just given above, but also due to the reasons I'm about to give & the connected next point I'll get to soon. For one example, "Jay" made the donation post in the first screenshot i gave where they claimed they were scared they were going to freeze to death, and that they could hardly even type on their phone due to the absolute insane cold temperatures of Toronto.

However, I took a look at the Toronto weather forecast for the day that raisedeyebrowemojii posted that update (February 12th, 2023) and found that the temperature had gotten up to 6°C (or 42.8°F), with very little wind, and it didn't even get below freezing temperatures that day, and only got two degrees below freezing the night before (which is when they claim they were staying in a shelter). Canadians will know that this type of temperature in FEBRUARY is actually very very warm and pleasant. Like, unseasonably, weirdly warm. Screenshot for that below.

Now, for an actual homeless person, being outside in the cold, even if it's warmer than usual, this is still difficult and harsh conditions to live under. However, this is still a large exaggeration from what Raisedeyebrowemojii claimed it was, and youre not very likely to freeze to death in this kind of weather compared to the usual Canadian temperatures. The way "Jay" described it makes me think that it is not a Canadian who made this post, and is someone who was not in Toronto to actually know what temperature it was that day, but just assumed it would be very cold.

Impersonation of the real Jay Baldwin

Thanks to some help (of people whom I will keep anonymous for their safety & as a precaution of the scammer harassing them), i managed to locate the identity of the REAL Jay Baldwin, and was able to concretely find out that this person is who raisedeyebrowemojii was impersonating. So, who is the real Jay Baldwin you ask?

Jay Baldwin is a Black, disabled (who uses a wheelchair and has Cerebral Palsey) nonbinary Canadian and the founder of the private Facebook support group "Disabled, Queer, and Fabulous" with over 1.1K members, and is a student at Carleton university in Ontario, Canada, and this Jay Baldwin has actually been doing really well for themselves, and has gotten pretty famous in the Ottawa area. And, as you can see, the raisedeyebrowemojii "Jay" apparently has a lot in common with THIS Jay Baldwin, including their names, being Black, a disabled wheelchair user with Cerebral palsey, nonbinary, Canadian living in Ontario, and both use they/them pronouns. But let me show you how I know they've been stealing from this person.

One way I can tell that raisedeyebrowemojii definitely was not THIS Jay Baldwin is their faces. On the screenshot to the left is the icon that raisedeyebrowemojii (of allegedly "themselves") used for their blog, taken from the webarchive screenshot of their blog, and to the right is a cropped portrait photo of the real Jay Baldwin, taken from this information page on the official Carleton University website, which also lists most of the information I just listed about the REAL Jay.

Obviously these two people look absolutely nothing alike. And we can tell that raisedeyebrowemojii meant for their scamsona to look like the person on the left, because they also used a photo of another dark-skinned Black person in ANOTHER donation post. So they stole these selfies from a different person altogether, although I haven't yet been able to locate where they'd stolen them.

One of the reasons that raisedeyebrowemojii's lies were so convincing though is that they were stealing or misconstruing some of Jay Baldwin's life experiences almost in real time, and I believe that raisedeyebrowemojii was keeping tabs on Jay in order to harvest their life details. For example, on a Facebook post, Jay Baldwin mentioned the death of their father a few times, but also on June 26th 2022, made the memorial post below about the death of their uncle

and meanwhile, on August 25th 2022, raisedeyebrowemojii ALSO suddenly started saying that their dad died, which you can see on the screenshot of their tumblr profile, which as webarchive screenshot shows, was not there before. While they changed the dates, raisedeyebrowemojii was clearly pulling from the real Jay's life, so it looks like we can see around the time that the dcammer decided to randomly incorporate this into their scamsona. As far as I can find, raisedeyebrowemojii never made a donation post regarding their "Father" and said that he was abusive, so adding this detail from the real Jay's life shows that it was unnecessary except to look more real and to manipulate people into believing them.

In the ways that raisedeyebrowemojii misconstrued things, they also of course constantly used the story that they were either homeless or on the verge of being homeless. Where Jay would post facebook updates of doing very well and being happy in life and even doing & hosting events for disability rights, raisedeyebrowemojii around the same time would post about needing money due to either allegedly starving, of dying, needing medical attention, or being homeless.

Below are screenshots of, in the order that they appear (so we're going chronologically in time that these were posted by both raisedeyebrowemojii and Jay Baldwin respectively) from left to right, raisedeyebrowemojii asking for money on February 16th 2023 talking about being in allegedly horrific conditions, then Jay Baldwin posting a peppy update on facebook, looking very happy and having a drink with the caption "Cheers to life!" on February 22nd, and then another donation scam post by raisedeyebrowemojii begging for money saying they're "on the streets" and "will die", posted on February 26th 2023.

You'll be happy to know that the real Jay Baldwin is not homeless or food insecure, and seems to have had a good relationship with both of their parents and is in an accepting home, unlike what raisedeyebrowemojii claimed THEY had, and claimed they were being abused. Raisedeyebrowemojii likely falsified all that while still impersonating Jay and keeping tabs on them in order to create a false sense of urgency whenever they wanted money at random.

Normally I wouldn't go into this much detail about the people who were stolen from in scams, but I feel like this case in particular it was important to point out where the scammer was pulling from to debunk their lies, but also because the real Jay Baldwin has become quite an iconic figure in their area, and all this information was taken from multiple publicly available sources, and so I can only assume that Jay is comfortable with this personal information being known.

Little to no life details, interests, or personality outside of the impersonating Jay Baldwin, and manipulation

As I'm sure many of you know by now (as ive mentioned it in previous posts, and that some of you currently reading this were victims of the scammer), but raisedeyebrowemojii contacted multiple, predominantly Black users to attempt to befriend them, and they did this in order to appear more legitimate, and most likely so that they had "friends" to call upon should any of their scams have been questioned. We've also seen this with multiple other scammers where a new blog will appear and suddenly start tagging mostly Black users to ask them to (unknowingly) reblog their scam posts.

And as a more famous example, we've seen this with the famed scammer Laura Deramas where she befriended multiple users to get them to stick up for her.

But to get down to the title's point, outside of the life details they were stealing or misconstruing from the real Jay, Raisedeyebrowemojii didn't have much of their own personality or traits, which is common in scams. Say, for example, a scammer will create a scamsona who is a lesbian and loves cats and is making a fake donation post for a sick cat, and so in order to make their blog look more convincing, they will randomly reblog popular posts from tags about cats or lesbianism.

In Raisedeyebrowemojii's case, we had one user mention that while Raisedeyebrowemojii was trying to "befriend" them, Raisedeyebrowemojii would only answer very generic questions asked of them despite the fact that they sent the messages first appearing to try to get to know that user, like answering "I like reading!" Instead of answering what their favorite books are if asked about their interests. Below is a screenshot of that conversation. This user emphasizes that they never got an answer to the last question they asked.

"Kidney disease" and alleged "death"

I stated on my blog that I believe raisedeyebrowemojii randomly said that they were diagnosed with a "terminal kidney disease" (allegedly chronic kidney disease) specifically with the view that they could leave, deactivate, or abandon their blog and then move onto ANOTHER scam blog (and likely this was the blktransdyke blog) without looking suspicious or weird, because then people would just assume they had died, which is exactly what happened.

Raisedeyebrowemojii stopped posting around June 2023, and the blktransdyke blog appeared in early April 2023, which makes me think this is when they started to move to that blog or potentially even another blog we don't yet know about. Funeral scams, or scams where the scammer pretends their persona has "died" in general is not new and is actually pretty common. It's possible that raisedeyebrowemojii was going to (or may still attempt) to return on another blog and pretend to be a family member or "friend" of the raisedeyebrowemojii in order to ask for alleged "funeral money", which we've seen with blogs like the now deleted blog @destrawberry.

But the main reason I think why they stopped posting in specifically June is because that is around the time the real Jay Baldwin was gaining popularity again, doing multiple public events, and was doing very very well, so I think the scammer became aware there was now more of a chance of people discovering their scam. In June, Jay won an award at an LGBT film festival for a documentary they had made ("Supporting Out Selves") and an Academic Hospital wrote a piece on their success, and in August they announced that they teamed up with ASE Community Foundation for Black Canadians with Disabities to host their 3rd student summit in September. You can find evidence of this by googling or by looking at Jay Baldwin's facebook, but of course, please give respect to the real Jay Baldwin & do not pester them.

Conclusion

All in all I hope that this clarifies a lot of things for those of you that were confused by all this, and again, I extend my dearest sympathies to those who donated to raisedeyebrowemojii and were manipulated by them, I know the feeling and I'm so terribly sorry that it's happened to you too. I advise any Black users especially to be very cautious about any new blogs with a donation post up that is new, and this new blog is trying to ask you to reblog their donation post: it's common for scammers to retarget anybody who may have donated to them, talked to them, or even just barely interacted with them before.

I'll put some of raisedeyebrowemojii's old paypals, gfm accounts, etc in either the replies or another reblog, because for now I'm running out of space. If you donated to them at any point, i suggest you report their accounts where you did the donating. And in the mean time, my colleague @kyra45 is taking testimonies on raisedeyebrowemojii, so if you have an experience with this scammer and would like to share that experience with us so we can document this scammer's behavior, please send Kyra an ask.

[thetownwecallhome]

Call Out Post

((OOC: Sorry tender lumplings for the impromptu callout. I genuinely don't like doing this at all but it's this person's fault for talking to me. Well @everythingjackskellington, here's your feature. Also delete your blog.

PLEASE don't buy from @everythingjackskellington. They are THEFT, an AI junkie and a SCAMMER.

They just recently dropped a promo ask in my box and I immediately recognized their art as being both AI and stolen in their collection on ViralStyle.

The moment I saw the "Ragdoll Coffee" insignia I recognized it as being that of Ellador's art from Redbubble. Buy her actual design here.

Given that I am A) a redbubble artist myself, and we have to sift through LOTS of art theft, including our own art being stolen, and B) have a sister who's been ripped off herself, I will not tolerate this. You are exploiting other artists and TNBC fans who don't know any better.

Please, everyone reading, do NOT buy TNBC fan merch that does not clearly have the artist's name attached. We get our work stolen enough for AI. Also I don't care if the above artwork you linked me with isn't AI. You stole it. You didn't make it.

Thief.

Do not buy this. If you have some time to kill while you're on vacay and/or wrapping xmas presents, see Hbomberguy's latest video on creator theft and plagiarism. It is worth you time and is a great example as to why I have no tolerance for this kind of thing.

The only silver lining, to spare you all from looking yourself and giving them anymore traction, was laughing at some of the clearly unthought out automated stuff they slapped Jack and Sally on. It'd be funny if you actually had any thought behind it, but again I know you didn't:

To the antiJallys/Sally-going-her-own-way-crowd, these would be funny if they weren't baseless generative crap. In fact, make your OWN gay sally designs outta this. I believe in you~

Well, you got the Blink182 lyrics right but wow you missed out on the one opportunity to spam Jack's face on something and needlessly swear. Good one, but I don't know why the Monster High logo is there.

Also yes this person swears like a sailor and does just what I said. If you want Jack on a bunch of stuff that has nothing do with him...you should still flag this store and not buy from them. But here they are, regardless.

Oh, and nice Autism Speaks propaganda there.

[kyra45]

bubblegum-highlighted-flavor Follow

Feb 7

Please help! Please boost!

If “bubblegum-highlighted-flavor” contacts you, it’s a scammer. Don’t donate to them. The cat in their post is from a private group and the original post says the vet bill is paid now. Also the url is just plagiarized from another tumblr account who has the same icon. This screenshot shows what they had at the time of the callout in case they change it.

(The account is gone now but leaving up in case they remake with a similar style. Don’t confuse them for the real one.)

[12percentspider]

For future reference re: "help i have asthma at maximum level and my nose freezes"

Because they'll remove my callout on the post (but they can't remove the reblogs themselves!) and it won't be visible to people in the notes... so it's best to get the word out.

This?

^Stolen from here. If you look at the blog's post, you can see that I had screenshotted it when the post was ten hours old and immediately the person had started spamming others with asks. The url is slightly off of a terminated one I had been alerted to (thank you as always!!!!)

Here's a copy of the ask, you can see that this url here (terminated, as are others) is extremely similar to the currently active (as of posting) url.

Scammers often remake with nearly identical urls, I am not 100% sure why, maybe because if they remake they can make you think it's not remade? But anyway, yeah, they tend to stick to some kind of "branding" for each scam they run.

As of posting, the name being used on the paypal fundraiser is Lucy Mukira. I have checked, and that is NOT the paypal the person on twitter (whom I have no reason to suspect and twitter is out of my department unless you-know-who is involved never mind i kept forgetting to edit this and they ARE suspicious) is using.

[ghostgirlvii]

So, I got commission scammed! Yaaay......

TLDR; I asked on a post if anyone knew about an artist who could some something specific, got contacted by @/ patriciahaskenswrite, aka Muhammad Shariq on Paypal, didn't listen to my gut feelings, ended up being scammed €150 and I'm waiting to getting it back! Yes calling out with their real name because fuck this scammer and they could use other username on social!

Alright buckle up anyone who want to read the whole story.

Yesterday, I made a post looking for an artist who was comfortable drawing a polyamarous ship (not everyone might be so I wasn't sure) got some reaction here and there, but someone slided in my DMs. here come my callout to the scammer, @ patriciahaskenswrite / patricia._.draws on IG

I'm gonna say it now, if they contact you THEY ARE A SCAMMER! DO NOT ACCEPT!

So the begining of the conversation started well and you know I really thought they were legit. Till the first red flag should have raised more alarm than it did. They didn't really gave what were their prices, instead asked me how much I was willing to pay. Which I said somewhere around 150-180. I was asking for three full bodies after all. They said that for this kind of work they usually ask around 270, but would give me a discount to 240 because it was our first time working together. Ok... I guess I mean, considering their art and all, it sounded fair enough. So we agree on the usual half-half. One before sketch and one when they start working. Here come me paying the 150. Second red flag also, but in a society of ever so migrating social media, it went a little under, their portfolio on IG was all dated from March 8 of this year (2025).

Third red flag. They don't send me an invoice, at least not like I would do. But the payment was still made under products and services (so I can escalate to Paypal) but the BIGGEST red flag that was flashing like the freaking Star Trek Red Alert and that my gut feelings told me ABORT!, which I didn't listen, is when the Paypal account's name did not match the username. Patricia sounds like any legal name someone would have and should have been expected on Paypal as well. No instead I got a Muhammad Shariq which deserve a call out as well. If you ever see this name after decided to go throught an 'artist' payment, RUN!

Like an idiot, I did the payment and only this morning I couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. What can I do? Reverse Google Search. Took a screenshot of their art on IG, put it the search and low and behold! I find this Facebook page of an French artist, who has been active since 2013! Well well well, it seems my guts were right! There was something scammy about Patricia/Muhammad. I contacted the French artist right away and she confirmed that she was indeed the real artist. She was both glad I brought this to her, but also angry that someone would do this. We talked a little back and forth about the situation. One good thing in all of this is that she still proposed herself to make the commission I asked the scammer. But of course this time I know it's the actual artist and I can trust her. (I'll put a pin on this because she really had a good style!) She is also on IG under the name @ astrella.illu <3

I decided to play nice at first with the scammer. (IDIOT!) Trying to get my money back a more civilized way. What was I thinking? I had to call them out to get something and even then... As I am writing this, I'm still waiting for the refund but I did escalated with Paypal. We will see where this go, but I'll go further if needed. Not only for the money, but also to just not let the scammer win a thing!

So be careful guys! If you gut tells you do back down, LISTEN! Don't be like me and get scammed just because I really wanted some art but I wasn't sure who to ask to because I know not every one can be comfortable with poly ship. I guess the morale of the story for me is; don't be shy to ask people I would trust, actually artist I know and worked with! Two; If the name doesn't match the paypal, refuse! And never trust someone who come forwards when you look for commissions, or maybe. It depends I think here. But be wary.

[spot-the-antisemitism]

Out of - morbid curiosity, I suppose? - I decided to take a look at the @/gazavetters account that all the GoFundMe scams tag as "having vetted them," because surely, SURELY some well-meaning Gaza GoFundMe reposter like, actually looked at the account to see what was on it, right?

And the first thing I was hit with - literally, the pinned post on the account - is full of the most obvious AI-slop pictures.

This whole thing is a fucking joke. I would laugh if it wasn't so rampant on this godforsaken webbed site, and if shouting into the void would yield anything but my own echo at best, and accusations of racism at worst for doubting their Gaza GoFundMe overlords and Scammers in Chief El-Shab and... whatshisname. Can't even remember.

I know you don't really like when people send you pictures in your asks, but if you're unable to see the gazavetters blog for yourself, let me know and I'll happily (god, that word is pulling so much higher than its weight) provide screenshots.

I actually hate when people DON’T send me pictures in asks and instead give me the dreaded broken link idk how you got that backwards

but yeah three mods of gazavetters are all scammers themselves. It’s a racket. They’re the scam mafia. Remember when Shab harassed a Gazan women who noticed a scammer he vetted was using photos of her nieces snd nephews until she took down the callout post and signal boosted a scam that exploited her own relatives? I remember