Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition
Alert to Virtual Gallery Artists

We want you all to be aware that someone is using the OVAC Virtual Gallery to target artists to attempt to make fraudulent transactions. We have done everything we can to try to stop this but they continue to contact our member artists. Here are some clues that we've noticed in all the interactions that we have been aware of:

• The email contains many grammatical errors and some broken english
• The potential "buyer" has a story about planning a move or having just moved overseas, particularly South Africa
• They offer to pay with a cashiers check

Some of the artists have actually received cashier's checks from these people and they turn out to be fraudulent. PLEASE - if you are contacted by someone online, verify that their form of payment is valid. Below is a copy of one of the fake cashier's checks one of our members received.

If you do receive one of these interactions, you can do the following:

• Report them to the company who provides their email service (such as Yahoo, AOL or Google) as email scams are a violation of their Terms of Service.
• Report them to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center: www.ic3.gov
• If you have received anything from them in the mail, you can make a police report.

We hope that none of you have to deal with this but want you to be informed in case it should happen to you.

OVAC staff