I spent this morning writing up the attempt at fraud directed at me recently, as material for somebody who is actually writing an article on the subject of art scams for an art magazine. If there are enough cases around to make it worth somebody’s while to write about it then it is clear that my case is far from being an isolated one.
It was interesting going back over the email correspondence between me and the fraudster. Looking at it in the cool air of hindsight I was struck by the number of occasions on which I actually missed small clues at the time which might have given away his game rather sooner. Of course, I am very pleased to have spotted the problem before it was too late, and rather proud of my acuity in the way I handled things. Nevertheless, it is a little disturbing to realise the extent to which, at the beginning, I was carried away by the enthusiasm generated by my pleasure at receiving an apparent enquiry from an intending purchaser of one of my pictures.
In addition to my taking on board the lesson that, in the event of any future approaches of this kind, I should not allow my pleasure at the prospective sale to get in the way of suitable caution, I think that I have been given pause for thought on another front. To listen to some of my colleagues you might think that the internet was really the answer to any artist’s need for a marketing outlet. I read a piece recently by a colleague who appeared to think that Instagram was virtually an answer to prayer. The truth of the matter is, however, that the internet has provided a tool for fraudsters which they didn’t have before. I’ve yet to hear of a case ion which a gallery was defrauded, acting on behalf of an artist/client. As the Bard put it: “All that glisters is not gold.”