Fraud Alert! - Scam Alias: Tracy Martins

Artists are now common targets of advance fee fraud, also known as the Nigerian letter scam, 419 fraud, or a Nigerian money offer. In January 2007 I got one of these suspicious emails and started looking into the alias of the sender. That’s when I learned many artists are being targeted by advance fee scams.

Now I share my 419 fraud emails here for the benefit of other artists who might be targets of this scheme. I also wrote a response you can use whenever one of these emails lands in your inbox. Since using that standard reply, my scam emails have slowed down to a trickle.

From: tracy_gumel@highdesert.com

Sent: Friday, March 30, 2007 8:20 PM

To: anima@artbyanima.com

Subject: Gift order

Hello,

My name is Tracy Martins, i will like to order for a piece of your art work from your gallery as gift for my parent who are celebrating thier 30th wedding annivasarys , so i will be gald to have your reply asap, i will be glad if you can send me your website address to choose or send me four of your product that is availble for me to choose . payment will be make by a cashier cheque.

Waiting to read from you today.

thanks

Tracy

If you've received a suspiscious email but you're not sure that it's definitely a scam, try this email reply that I wrote in March.

Have you been targeted by the Nigerian email scam? Share it with other artists on this blog or leave a comment.

Labels: fraud and scams