Thursday, August 05, 2010

Art Scam

I've got another art scam email to share:

From: Samuel Matinez (s.martinez212@gmail.com)
Sent: Wed 8/04/10 4:12 PM
--
Hi Dear,
My name is Samuel Martinez, i will like to order for some piece of your work from your studio as gift for my parent are celebrating their wedding anniversary, so i will be glad to have your reply as soon as possible, i will be glad if you can send me your website address to choose or send me four of your product via email that is available for me to choose.

Waiting to read from you today.so that we can make some progress.

I will be waiting to read from you at you convinet time.

thanks

Samuel Martinez.
This asshole can't even spell his fake name right (Matinez). But as it is the tradition in my dealings with these scam emails, I always send them a hook back. Here's my response:
Dear Samuel,

Thank you for your order and interest. I am very pleased with your interest and desire to own some of my artwork. As you probably already know, recently I've sold a lot of work thanks to all that great publicity that I received! I've never had so much money in the bank in my life before. It is so odd to struggle in making good art for so long, and then suddenly a break happens and people are buying my artwork from all over. Last month alone I deposited over $750,000 in my bank account from art sales. There's well over a million dollars in there now!

I am very picky as to who owns my artwork. Before I sell it to you, I need to know a few things about you. Also, I will need an international money order as payment or I can send you all my bank account details and you can transfer the funds. I will ship the artwork as soon as I receive an International Money Order.

But before that can even be a conversation I need to make sure that my precious, beloved artwork will be loved and in the collection of a deserving collector. Therefore, I need to know a little more about you. Where do you live and what do you do for a living? (Warning: if you are a Kosher or Halal butcher, I will refuse to sell you my art). Also, if you are married, I need to know if you have children. If you do, you must promise in writing that you will protect my artwork from possible damage from the rugrats.

I am also picky as to where you will hang the work. Please send me JPG (not TIFF) images of your walls in your house so that I can select the spot where you'd hang the work.

Please forgive me for being so picky, but my artwork is very important to me, and I know that it will give you years and years of visual pleasure. We can work together to make sure that it works out well.

May Allah, Yaweh, Buddha, Christ and Crom bless your home and may the bluebird of happiness fly all over the house of Martinez

your friend The Lennymeister....

PS - Can I call you Sammy?

6 comments:

Andrew the Barbarian said...

Lenny,
I'll double check with Ron E. Howard, but I think you would pray for Crom to crush a house, not bless it. A good reply none the less.

Anne said...

Too funny! Nice response. I once had one of these scammers asking me for assurances--something along the lines of "before we do business, I need to know that you are an honest and trustworthy person..." The gall, I thought. The message had scam written all over it, (the typical money-order-for-more-than-the-sales-price-to-pay-the-shipper story) and they thought that with this stipulation, they would persuade a person otherwise.

Ellen Cornett said...

Been kind of a rough morning,and this made me laugh out loud. Thank you!

Ellen

Jarvis Grant said...

I got one of these too! Sam gets around!

Heather said...

Sammy sent me an email too... My response was no where near as funny as yours but along the same lines...Nice job!

Susan L. said...

OK, if you are ever feeling down and need a good laugh, you have to read the story of one scambaiter's correspondence with a scammer in which he really messes with the guy's head. It is hilarious--- especially when he sends the scammer pictures of himself. I read it after one too many of these emails came my way. It's at:
http://www.419eater.com/html/joe_eboh.htm

Highly recommended!