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Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Scam Email: Frank Mayfield II

I hate when I get emails like the one below. My stomach just sinks. And I know I have to keep working at posting these. All the scammers need are a few success cases to make all their efforts worthwhile and I just need to keep posting all their efforts to make it harder for them to catch artists unaware.

Because the artist below had actual financial loss, he did one thing right - immediately contact the bank. And now he can also use the links I have in the upper right column for reporting the online crime to the FBI and the Internet Crime Report Center. The artwork doesn't come back, by the way. Not sure what scammers do with the art but it doesn't come back. And given the scammer using the Frank Mayfield name had a success this week, we can all be sure we'll be seeing more of this one this week.

I have an earlier blog post on Frank Mayfield, with the contents of the actual scam email. Use the search bar at the top of my blog for Frank Mayfield and you'll find the earlier alert as well. I felt like this report deserved its own post to being up to the top of the list.
Dear Kathleen. I am sending you this email as I have unfortunately fallen for a scam that I later found posted by you. Feeling terrifically naive and stupid, but If there is anything I can do to help you get this guy. I would like to help as much as I can. I really don't know if there's anything I can do, It is the Frank mayfield scam. I contacted police and there is nothing they can do and had no suggestion beyond going to the bank where I cashed the money and alerting them. Which I promptly did. I now am just waiting to hear back from the bank as to whether the travellers checks I cashed were stolen or counterfeit. Is there anywhere I can report this to, or  should report this to.? Actually sent portrait, I imagine it will come back to me. Are you aware of anyone else who fell for this particular scam that I could perhaps contact? My god I feel dumb !
Don't feel dumb. Really ALL scams and cons are set up to make the victims feel ashamed and dumb. Think of all the celebrities and really smart people who fell for the Bernie Madoff scam and then felt ashamed and dumb. It's how these work. It's not about you. With the proper information, you would have known better and acted differently. I'll just keep posting these, and adding them to my facebook page for spreading the word about scams and hopefully these will keep showing up in the Google results and then I have to just get more and more artists to know to google the name first if something doesn't seem right.

So so sorry this happened to you. Report it to links above and stay on your bank and hopefully our report of your experience will help others avoid the same fate. Thanks for sharing your unfortunate experience.

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