So I Got Scammed! What's next??

Are you not entertained?

Yeah so, it was bound to happen. I am desperate and vulnerable and hungry, what's new?

It all began 2 nights ago while perusing around Freelancer.com trying to see who had low enough expectations to actually hire me for something. I don't have the skills, or the experience, or the rave customer reviews to actually pick up any decent work (really any at all so far). So I was thrilled to have received my very first message from someone saying they'd like to offer me a project. I'd seen people offer specific freelancer's projects before, so I thought maybe I'd gotten lucky! Maybe someone had checked out my website and thought, hey lets give this chick a chance!

At this point, I want to point out, that I'd like to consider myself a relatively intelligent person. I mean, I'm smarter than your average tool shed. (hehe...what's it called when you mix up sayings like that again?) I'm not proving myself to be an idiot am I? Well anyways. I was aware from the get go that this was likely a scam. But, going with it anyways is what happens when you are down to your last $7 dollars, out of food and out of gas in your car. (You know, the car that I'm waiting to get taken away) I mean, can you blame me for wanting to believe in something?? The money wasn't ridiculous! It didn't seem too good to be true and I was just hoping for the best. I know that there is a "beware the scammers" note that pops up when you receive a message on Freelancer.com, but it was the first time I was seeing it and I didn't pay attention, I whipped past it, ok! I'm sorry!

Here was the gig. I was to work 2 hours, 5 days a week as a virtual assistant for $300 a week. That's $30/hr. That's good money but it's not insane, It's reasonable and me knowing myself I would end up working more than 2 hours anyways so it seemed fair. They said it was really a 2 week gig, but that I could keep working on it, however long I wanted. Fair.. I think? And what I was to be doing basically was create a website on Wix.com for an online art gallery. The company was supposedly called Alabaster Art Snap Gallery. And what they supposedly do is sell the art of young artists online. So here is where I thought maaaaayyybe this is cool! I'm a sort of artist, and I have created a website on Wix.com. So maybe, just maybe they really did look at my profile and see what I could do, and think I was the right fit for it. Because in all seriousness - the gig fits! So in an effort not to question too much and piss off a potentially legit source of income, I went along with it. They told me that they don't really work with Freelancer, they just recruit freelancers there, but all the communication is done through email and google hangout sessions. I should mention that after actually reading the scam warning message, it specifically says- not to trust people who don't work with the site, and want to communicate through other means. Like I said, I whipped past it and thought communicating through email was perfectly reasonable. I sent him an email, and then he asked me to set up a gmail account so I could used google hangout. So i got a gmail account. Which by the way is garbagegallerie@gmail.com get at me! (Maybe I'm asking for it just giving out my address like that?) Idc this is my site! Oh yeah and he told me to ignore any other offers for anything like this because the company uses Freelancer to recruit and I shouldn't agree to work with anyone else offering the same thing to avoid "unhealthy competition". Honestly I don't even know what I was thinking, just hang in there with me.

We started talking on google hangout. I should mention, this guys english is pretty good but there are some funky things..things that raise eyebrows in an already sketchy situation, but that you can chalk up to typo's if you try hard enough. That's what I did. I tried to believe this was real, but I also tried to protect myself, at least I thought I did. I looked up the name of the gallery, I looked up this dudes name + scam, I looked up his email + scam. I looked up "Art gallery scam" etc. I was trying to do my homework. I couldn't find anything. So I asked him if they had a website already, or something I could look them up from. He says that they are currently updating the website and it wasn't up yet. Fair enough...sort of. But then again, why am I even making a website? I really wasn't sure what was expected of me, but he said that I'd create my own company name for the website that I would operate from. So I thought I was like just an affiliate site or something, so that they could bring more traffic, or sell more work idk...It makes sense if you try really hard to blur the lines and make it make sense.

So Dur dur dur, he emailed me some documents. One was a file of paintings, one of the prices (which are ALL $550.00) A little blurb about the company, return policies etc Real legit sort of stuff. I downloaded it and saved it on my computer and he made sure I got it all and could open everything. I tell you these details because they will become important in a bit. Anyways, I get on my happy little way creating the website, coming up with the name and the concept, you know cuz.. I'm a professional! Everything is fine. My boyfriend's like: "You know this is most likely a scam" and I'm like: "Yeah but they haven't asked for anything personal yet and jokes on them if they are trying to scam me out of money because haha I ain't got none! And either way I'm not mad because at least it gives me more experience web designing." We shrug it off.

THEN. Yesterday morning, dude says, i've got to set up a quickbooks account because as a Virtual Assistant, part of my job - once the website is up, will be processing customer payments. I mean assuming this was legit, that sounds reasonable right? I don't know what VA's do other than listen to the boss, so that's what I did! So he starts walking me through opening the account and he seems to know what he's talking about. The account right now is only $10 bucks but I tell him, I have no money for it. He 'assures' me that they charge monthly and I'd be paid before they actually charge and of course i'm not responsible for paying it blah blah. I'm not bothering to point out all the major red flags because I think it's pretty clear at this point that i'm a fucking idiot. BUT back to the story. Me, not wanting to question too much and piss off the one person in the world trying to pay me right now, I said ok, and knowing damn well I haven't paid my credit card bill in a while, I tried with that, and somehow it worked. (For then - I got an email later that it didn't go through, but that's beside the point)

Now things get even weirder, because his instructions to set things up aren't matching up anymore. So he asks for me to take a screenshot and it occurs to me, maybe that's the scam plan, to get my info from the screenshots! BUT nothing personal is on the screenshots and once again I figure even so - I ain't got no money. So I do, and he's unhelpful but we end up figuring it all out and I set it up with my bank account information.

He asks for me to forward him the email confirmation that the account is ready. The email had my account ID number so I googled if it's safe for anyone else to see that, but I found nothing on it. The whole time I am wondering how this works, if I process payments to my bank account, how does the company end up getting the money? I think, maybe we end up linking accounts somehow (without them having access - just being able to transfer between the two) and he needs the email for the ID number so that they can do that. So I send it, and I ask him how it all works, and I try to find sneaky ways of asking for more information without raising suspicion. Of course, he doesn't really explain anything, and of course - I let it be. Worse case, he steals my $7 bucks right?...

Anyways he then asks me to process this woman's payment for a painting called "Oceans". This is one of the paintings I am supposed to put up on my site, so I am expecting that after this, he will tell me not to include that painting. Wait FIRST of all!, all the art work SUCKS!...ok the's rude, and not all of it does, but it is all really seriously bullshit pictures of it. Like all slanted and against a door, the flash on making it look like there's an extra bright light in the paining. A persons shadows of them taking the picture on the painting. Etc. So the whole time I'm like how am I going to make these look presentable on the website? But the point is, it is clear that these are all supposed to be one of a kind. Even though, some of them look like they were stolen from a chain of run down dental offices or something. And they are ALL priced at Five Hundred and Fifty Dollars. I spell that out because I was half expecting that there was a missing decimal and zero, and they were really $55.00

Back to the story, this woman was buying a particularly ugly and old looking painting (I'm sorry to say), and I was processing her card for it. I didn't have a lot of time to think about what I was doing, I was following orders, trying to prove that I could do this without fucking up. I did it. And that was it for the day. My 2 hours were definitely up. I tried not to think about it much more throughout the day.

Today, I am working on the website and the dude is not messaging me at all and my 2 hours is almost up. But I just keep thinking about the payment because it wasn't sitting well. And the fact that he hadn't told me not to put the picture of the paining she had "bought" on the website bothered me, because if it was one of a kind and sold, there would be no need for it to be included right? So then it hit me, The scam is not for my money like I thought it would be, the scam is for the customers money, and to PIN the fraud on me! She was never going to get that ugly painting! And when she didn't, the transaction would be traced back to me and my account processing it. That makes ME look like the scammer! So damn. i'm like shit. And I start feverishly looking up scams again. "Art scam", "Virtual Assisting Scam" Etc. Nothing comes up thats related to my situation. Until finally I got smart and searched "Payment processing scam" and I read an article that laid it all out. It said, that these kinds of scams- find a job seeker, and they scam both the job seeker (in this case me) AND the customer. Using me (the job seeker) to keep their hands clean. BUT THAT"S NOT ALL! They get the job seekers to open up documents on their computers that infects their computer and steals all their information that way!

So i'm freaking out right and I want to call him out on it but I think...I better play it cool. Because what if, as soon as i do, they act fast and fuck me up somehow. They already could have access to my computer, because as I said earlier, they sent those docs and I opened them. I could only conceive of how they might be trying to get me to pay for something or steal my money. it did not occur to me how deep it could go. I mean I know that kind of stuff happens but it just seems like so much work when they can scam in other ways. So anyways i'm freaking out but part of me still wants to believe it's legit. But I got smart and remembered you could actually look up pictures on google, by uploading the picture. So I did that for one of the paintings, and lo and behold, I found 2 other websites with the EXACT same pictures and the EXACT same information blurbs. But I STILL wanted to believe that it was ok, because I had figured there were a couple different websites distributing the same stuff for the same company. But that is when I saw on one of the websites, that everything was the same, except for the company name. At that time I guess it went by "Clarito Pen Art Gallery". So finally, that was enough for me, and I called Quickbooks.com to have them reverse the transaction so the "stolen" money didn't end up in my account. Thankfully the ladies on the phone where SUPER nice and helpful and understanding and it was a relatively easy fix, and they closed down my account no sweat. Then I deleted everything off my computer and the half finished website and blocked his contact.

So the long and short of it is, I got scammed, but not out of my little bit of money. And although that part of it is resolved, I still might not be in the clear. They could have all my information already and there's nothing I can do about it. They still have my email addresses, my phone number, they know my website, etc. They can come for me again. they can destroy my computer from the inside, but I am really really hoping the scam wasn't that deep. i just don't know and STILL a part of me want's to believe it was legit and I just freaked out and ruined my chances of making some money. But I think that is my sense of pride and wanting to believe I'm not as stupid as I apparently am. I want to believe that it's ok if they have my info because I'm broke, and my credit is shit so they wouldn't get very far stealing my identity. But then I ruin my half assed optimism by remembering that my record is still clean... and I am a legal american hispanic women that they could easily sell my identity to an immigrant or something. And then I get deported. Fuck our president man. This sucks! But then again, you and I have to remember: I am on my LAST LEG, with no safety net. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and these are desperate times! So I have to forgive myself for this.

So anyways, that's the latest story in a series of unfortunate events from the universe's favorite punching bag

I'm just kidding, I know I have it bad right now, but it is NOTHING compared to so many people out there, who are in incredibly terrible situations that are out of their control and they didn't put on themselves (unlike me). I'm just bitchin. And I hope the universe know's i'm kidding and doesn't really come at me with some more bullshit! I could really use a break! That being said - I can take it! If anything this experience is making me stronger. in the immortal words of Kelly Clarkson "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger!" Of if anyone said it before her, their words...whatever, i'm sorry for the ear worm - I did it to myself!

BUUUUTTT... If you wanna help me out, i've stooped so low as to to start a GoFundMe campaign.

https://www.gofundme.com/manage/pity-penny-i-need-to-save-my-car

Ok, I'll stop embarrassing myself now.

XOXO - GarbageGal

P.S. - Don't Judge me! Funny reacts, and money only! LOL