Tammy Arnott
10-27-2015, 1:59 PM
Hi all. Just wanted to pass along some info on a scam. I received a text saying someone needed me to engrave 500 mugs and 500 plates for a birthday party. My alarm bells went off immediately - who has that kind of birthday party? and who texts in that size of an order? - but I thought I'd play along in case it was just some rich guy with nothing better to spend his money on.
It looks like there are several different scams that are hitting print shops and others in small- to medium-sized manufacturing businesses where a large orders sometimes makes you mute your inner doubt. Most of what I found were shipping scams where they paid you for a rush order with a stolen credit card.
The "customer" is completely unconcerned about the art, and he needed the items in hand in 10 days. He's eager to pay me and hasn't even asked to see a proof. He pestered me every few hours until 2 am Friday night, then told me they'd talk to me again on Monday after I asked him for more details on the type of plate. Kind of a long break to go without answering my questions when you need something urgently. They finally told me they were normal dinner plates and mugs. As you know, there's no way to know what kind of glaze was on them or whether they'd work, so I asked for manufacturer information, color, size, etc. and started to become very difficult to work with. I basically told him if he couldn't give me the manufacturer info, I wouldn't be able to do them. So he sent me an email (from a new outlook.com account) with photos of wooden plates and mugs that he lifted from Pinterest (thank you google image search). Not exactly standard dinner plates, but whatever. I quoted him a price and an outrageous rush fee and he agreed and asked for my address so he could have them shipped. I just played that request off with more questions, and then he mentioned a small "favor" he needed my help with. This large wood plate and mug manufacturer supposedly only deals in cash and he was going to allow me to charge him my fee plus an additional $400 for a business "tip" if I could pay the plate manufacturer for him. So he wanted me to add $5k to the credit card charge for that too. He asked weird questions, like what company I used to process credit cards. Who needs to know that??? I mentioned that if the plate manufacturer only took cash, I couldn't pay them either, and he said they DID accept Western Union and he would up my tip if I'd be willing to do that for him. How very convenient!
I"m annoyed, so I'm just wasting his time now with ridiculous questions and I sent him a ton of bogus forms to fill out, including a credit card authorization form so I'll have a signature and some handwriting samples when I hand all this over to the authorities.
I'm sure most everyone here is too savvy to fall for this type of scam, but I wanted to post just in case!
Tammy
It looks like there are several different scams that are hitting print shops and others in small- to medium-sized manufacturing businesses where a large orders sometimes makes you mute your inner doubt. Most of what I found were shipping scams where they paid you for a rush order with a stolen credit card.
The "customer" is completely unconcerned about the art, and he needed the items in hand in 10 days. He's eager to pay me and hasn't even asked to see a proof. He pestered me every few hours until 2 am Friday night, then told me they'd talk to me again on Monday after I asked him for more details on the type of plate. Kind of a long break to go without answering my questions when you need something urgently. They finally told me they were normal dinner plates and mugs. As you know, there's no way to know what kind of glaze was on them or whether they'd work, so I asked for manufacturer information, color, size, etc. and started to become very difficult to work with. I basically told him if he couldn't give me the manufacturer info, I wouldn't be able to do them. So he sent me an email (from a new outlook.com account) with photos of wooden plates and mugs that he lifted from Pinterest (thank you google image search). Not exactly standard dinner plates, but whatever. I quoted him a price and an outrageous rush fee and he agreed and asked for my address so he could have them shipped. I just played that request off with more questions, and then he mentioned a small "favor" he needed my help with. This large wood plate and mug manufacturer supposedly only deals in cash and he was going to allow me to charge him my fee plus an additional $400 for a business "tip" if I could pay the plate manufacturer for him. So he wanted me to add $5k to the credit card charge for that too. He asked weird questions, like what company I used to process credit cards. Who needs to know that??? I mentioned that if the plate manufacturer only took cash, I couldn't pay them either, and he said they DID accept Western Union and he would up my tip if I'd be willing to do that for him. How very convenient!
I"m annoyed, so I'm just wasting his time now with ridiculous questions and I sent him a ton of bogus forms to fill out, including a credit card authorization form so I'll have a signature and some handwriting samples when I hand all this over to the authorities.
I'm sure most everyone here is too savvy to fall for this type of scam, but I wanted to post just in case!
Tammy