Art Scam
Christopher Chambers
It’s hard to remember how we managed to eat and breathe in those ancient days before cell phones and the Internet. This summer I received announcements from several art galleries and museums advertising that they are switching their press releases over to electronic media, completely. No surprise there–it’s an obvious benefit to these organizations in terms of time and money, and I suppose it’s better for the environment, even if local print shops go out of business. That said, I vastly prefer a pile of postcards and envelopes that I can sort through at my leisure. I don’t know about you, but I am much more likely to delete an announcement than take the time to open several attachments every time I wish to glance through the current roster of exhibitions, or print everything out at my own time and expense–that is if the spam filters allow the stuff to get through at all. Or just let Douglas Kelly do the organizing.
A few months ago I started a new folder in Outlook titled, "Scams." I have been merrily filling it up with a consistent supply of offers to distribute Nigerian wealth and announcements that I have won something wonderful if I will simply reconfirm the details of my credit card accounts and personal identification. However, one solicitation slipped past the radar for a spell:
A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from someone calling herself Kate Henshaw. She expressed an interest in purchasing an artwork of mine that she had seen on a website. I had sold, or rather, the site managers had sold numerous artworks for me online in the early days of the Internet, but sales have slowed as the www has become glutted and the initial enthusiasm has worn off. Anyway, negotiations proceeded and I started making arrangements to ship the piece to Spain’s Costa del Sol, where, I was told, her brother had recently built a home. Soon she started telling me that she was having difficulties purchasing a money order negotiable in American currency where she lived in Austria and she was wiring funds to a cousin here in the States who would forward the money to me, or some similar fuzzy but ultimately believable story. I was suspicious, but she always had reasonable explanations to allay my doubts. I invested quite a bit of time over the next week or two sorting out shipping details and confirming with my "client." But when she sent me a cozy jpeg of herself and another of her brother posing with his family in front of the construction site my spidey sense started tingling like crazy. I thought, "Why the hell is she sending me photos? Send me the friggin’ money!" I sent her a rather strong e-mail advising her to telephone any bank, get the exchange rate of the day, and simply mail me a check in whatever currency she chose. I never heard from her again. I googled up her name and came directly to an Internet fraud investigations site. I have no doubt that this was an attempt to pull some sort of scam, but the crook got cold feet when I copped an attitude. My biggest regret is that I never got to hear the punch line.
