To all 'artistic' woodturners who sell their work....
There is an attempted fraud doing the rounds in which a supposed customer contacts you, saying that he has noticed his wife looking at your web-site and admiring your work. He then asks to buy a couple of items (in my case, it was for a wedding anniversary) and that he will pay by "Bank Cheque".
In my case, what happened next was this...
- items from my stock were selected, a deal was done and my terms for payment in advance were agreed
- I was advised that the Bank Cheque had been posted to me
- I was then advised that there had been an error and that my name had been written onto the wrong cheque, which had been posted to me, for considerably more than was due to be paid
- I was asked to submit the cheque anyway, let it clear into my account and then await further instructions.
I wasn't fooled by all of this, and immediately spoke to my bank about it. Up to this point, nothing concrete could be identified as a fraud, but it all began to feel very suspicious.
Next.....
- A cheque arrived yesterday, it was not a bank cheque, but a business cheque, and it was made out for £2500, whereas the item that my 'customer' was buying was £390
- The cheque was drawn against a genuine business which I checked out on-line, they had about a million pounds' worth of assets and had been trading for years
- I took the cheque to the bank for them to investigate it and as soon as I handed it over they knew that it was a fake, purely by the feel of the paper
- The bank's fraud department and the police (Action Fraud) are looking into it
- The fraudster is now emailing me regularly trying to put pressure onto me to despatch the goods and send him a photocopy of the paying-in receipt from the bank
....I assume that the next step will be that the fraudster asks for reimbursement of his over-payment, but I will now block his email address.
It is clear that I am not alone in receiving this attempted fraud and that numerous other artists are being targeted.
Keep safe...Les
