Photographers, we aware of this scam from "buyers"

[allashulgina]

Hi everyone! I recently encountered spam messages from so-called "buyers" and wanted to share my experience here to prevent anyone to fall for this bait.

So basically, a "buyer" texts you that the need a photoshoot this Saturday, in a local skateboard park. When I got the first message like that it didn't seem suspicious, although the style of messaging was kinda strange - the "buyer" didn't seem to be interested in giving any specific details about the shoot. So when I requested more information, that person disappeared, and boom - few hours later Fiverr recognized it was a scam and blocked that user. A few weeks late I've received the same exact message, so I just ignored it. But today I've received another message, that also seemed absolutely fine, until the person specified that he needs a shoot for... a skateboard magazine. I checked a "buyers" profile and it said that the used is on Fiverr since July 2024, which started like a week ago lol. I'm pretty sure that's an evolved form of the same scam.

The reason I decided to write this post is because I started googling about these "skateboard scammers" and didn't find any related posts anywhere except Reddit, where a person shares his experience of communicating with the same exact scammer (name and location were different, but contents were the same). So basically, he chatted with him for about a week, discussing details and other stuff, and ended with the scammer asking to pay the seller by electronic check. At this point the author of the post recognized it was a scam.

So, be aware and stay away from scammers. I hope you found this post helpful!

[creative_howl]

Thats insane. I'm glad you didn't fall for it.

These kinda "payment scams" are pretty popular from what I've seen over the years. Thankfully it's not easy for them to breach into this platform (but those who slip through the cracks will somehow find their way). Gotta stay vigilant these days.