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Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Scam Email: Richard Marrino

Here is another person, this time an art dealer, who trusted their instincts and looked up as much as they could about the person before sending any product or money. It had a lot of flags and he caught them all. The lesson for today? Trust your instincts and if it doesn't feel right - google it. Google the name, the email, look at the full headers and you can look up the originating IP and see where it is located. Notice he looked up the shipping company as well (at this point ANY email that mentions using their third-party shipping company is going to be totally suspect to me!).

Here is the message sent to me just now:
I'm an art dealer in New York and have just wasted about a week of negotiations on a supposed sale, that has turned out to be a scam I'm sure.

I did a google map search on the 'client's' address - turns out to be an airport. I did a google map search on the courier, turns out to be a residential address in the UK.

I also did an IP search on the emails, both of which were located in isolated places, nowhere near where the 'client' or 'courier' are located.

Only after these red flags did I do a google for art scams. Thanks for the additional information and confirming my worse fears - fortunately before I acted on any payments etc.

Perpetrators name: Richard Marrino: [richardmarrino@rocketmail.com]

The courier name: Techie Courier 

5 comments:

  1. I am writing from a photography gallery in Chelsea. We were approached by "Richard Marrino" as well and were not totally sure we were being scammed until we found this blog post. Thank you!

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  2. Dear Kathleen,

    I came upon your blog just yesterday when searching for a Richard Marrino, who emailed an artist I represent through his own website. Thank you for maintaining the Stop Art Scam's blog -- it's incredibly helpful.

    Thanks again and keep up the good work!

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  3. There is a 800 number you can call and they will tell the financial institution name on the card:call them and provide them with the name given to you be the fraudster!!!!! Do not send wire transfer to this character!!! I managed to get 3 credit card # from him and called the banks to advise them of the stolen info:

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  4. Thanks for this post. We just got an email from him and you saved us a lot of time.

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  5. I am the worst at cleaning out my e-mail box, and was deleting e-mails from 2006 when I also came across "Richard Marrino" e-mails: the stranger who tried to send me a huge money order to buy art from me, from a USA address, but he said he was from the Ukraine. When I tried to cash in the money order, the banker right away noticed it was a fraud. I copied and pasted our dialogue in one of my Facebook drafts.

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