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Monday, October 29, 2012

Scam Email: Andrew Hutton

Kathleen - I received an email from this person several months ago asking about purchasing my art. He asked if I could ship to Dubai and did I accept credit card payment. He contacted me through Fine Art America. I never heard back from him until yesterday. His email is below. Based on what I see I'm betting this is a scam and you'll want add this email / name to you list.

ahutton33@yahoo.com. Andrew Hutton
I do owe you an apology for the delay in reacting to your email. I have read the email you sent and is well understood. I do work as a safety person in an offshore oil rig presently in the Arabian gulf which makes communication a little difficult for me. I love arts and plan on retiring soon and opening a gallery in Dubai (UAE). I presently have some orders and for some, I do have the liberty to make a choice for my growing collection.

I am looking at opening a good business relationship with you, so as to supply me paintings for my Gallery.
Send me pictures of some of your collections so i choose, then you tell me the cost of the paintings will appreciate if you give me an quote too on shipping cost.
Soon as i get these informations i will communicate my card details to you for charge of both shipping and painting.

14 comments:

  1. Kathleen - this email came today:

    Hello,

    I must say you have beautiful Abstract paints and to be honest it would be very difficult for me to pick from, really i am having a difficult time in choosing a particular but i would like you to send me pictures from "Food for Thought" : Section and also from the "Step Outdoors" Sections 5pictures each with their pirces sizes and can you help me find out the shipping cost including COD.

    Also get back to me With the necessary quotations, i also hope to have a clue on the Shipping as i look forward to a long term business relationship with you.

    Thanks!

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  2. Hi, I also received today a similar email from an Andrew Hutton with an address in Saudi Arabia, same email address, sent via Original art online where I have some art for sale..Glad I found him here and thanks for posting it...the clue for me was the very English name with the bad English grammar..

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  3. I just received an email from this Andrew Hutton from Saudia Arabia via Original Art Online where I have just posted a couple of paintings no more than 4 hours ago. Was immediately suspicious.

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  4. But WHAT is the scam??? i got an identical email. he called my very representational paintings "abstract" and also mentioned C.O.D. charges. When I told him if he paid with mastercard there would be no C.O.D. charges he continued on his way asking for more paintings which were already sold and marked as such.

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  5. The scam is that the scammer overpays for whatever they are ordering (they could care less what it is) with either a counterfeit check or a stolen credit card (not yet reported as such), and have some fake story about needing to pay a shipper because they are moving the shipper will pick up the paintings. So they ask you to forward their overpayment on to the shipper - always via wire transfer (such as Western Union). Once the scammer picks the money up from Western Union, the money is gone and untraceable. There is no shipping company, and you will soon find out either the check was counterfeit (and the bank will withdrawn the money back out of your account), or the credit card will turn out to be stolen and will result in a chargeback.

    That's the essence of the scam.

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  6. yes, exactly, the very English name with the very STRANGE English grammar and obvious poor reading comprehension!!

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  7. thanks KatieMoe


    he actually gave up on me when I couldn't accept mastercard..

    Hello Mimi,

    How are you doing today, glad reading back from you also good to know you made efforts in accepting my mode of payment... But too bad I can't pay via paypal currently as I have tried signing up with my card but it just would not accept guess security measures...

    If there is any other way I could have paid other than using my card I could have, thanks anyway.

    Also nice meeting you!



    so the stolen card makes sense!!! gee, that must be why it didn't work with Paypal!

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  8. yes, though I doubt this scammer even tried paypal. They are pretending, remember. They know their credit card is stolen, from the get-go.

    Glad you didn't fall for this!

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  9. I have had my blog up for years and have never sold a single painting to a stranger off the internet. I knew he was a scammer immediately but I couldn't tell what the game was so I wanted to see just how far this guy was going to go. BTW, thanks for having this blog here. I just googled the guy's name and you came up first!

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  10. I just received an email yesterday from ahutton33@yahoo.com regarding a painting I listed. Thank you for the warning about this. On a different note, I was wondering if you have ever had any problems with Paypal transactions as this seems to be very safe to ensure both buyer and seller are protected. Paypal is going to be my only accepted method of payment but I want to be sure I am not overlooking anything as I am new to sales online.

    Thank You,

    Renee N.

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  11. Paypal does seem to be safe but here is how scammers use paypal to steal money: they tell the victim they are paying via paypal and then send the victim an email that has been doctored up to look EXACTLY like a paypal payment confirmation email, saying the payment has been received.

    You would not believe how many people never bother to check their actual paypal account to see the scammer actually never paid any money.

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  12. I've recently been contacted by someone called Richard Tristram. Almost exactly the same story. Thanks for posting this.

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  13. Also Thomas J Hogan the same fairy tale...
    Thanks for posting.

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  14. Hmmmm....seems like Thomas j. Hogan is a busy man. He contacted me too, but there was too much I was suspicious about. I put him onto one of my galleries so I do not think I will hear back. If I do, I will just ignore the emails.

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