Howdy!

Welcome to our first post in the Scampedia.

This is a relatively simple scam that involves the scammer using a legitimate artist's icon and a name that's very similar to trick you into sending them payment for an auction.

In this case, they did not reply to me in my second to the last bid, but to a casual comment I made on the adopt on the same page.

Thankfully, FurAffinity has clear indicators when the owner of the submission is commenting via the "OP" tag.

So does DeviantArt

Meanwhile, since the scammer has made a brand new account on FA, they have the "new account" tag.

Unfortunately, this scam is also being carried out on ToyHouse and possibly other sites.  These may not have the same indicators, so be vigilant before sending money. 

• Click on the profile to check of it's the artist's. 
• Know your artist.  Does their auction indicate they only take one type of payment, but you're being asked to send to another kind?  Such as the artist is Russian and accepts Boosty or Hipolink, but you're suddenly being asked to send to Paypal?  Russian artists can't use Paypal.

What can you do to fight back both as an artist or a client?

On FurAffinity you can keep new accounts from being able to reply to you or comment on your submissions.

Under "Global Site Settings"

At the time of writing this, neither ToyHouse nor DeviantArt have ways of blocking new members from contacting you.

However, on ToyHouse you can see a user's name change history by visiting their username stats page:

https://toyhou.se/(USERNAMEHERE)/stats/usernames

If someone is trying to run the scam using the same account, then they will have a lot of very different username changes logged here. 
If you want to be sure the person who is messaging you is the same person running the auction, you can click on the "Report" button to see their unique user ID.

In this case, my UIN is "47055".  That will never change.  If the UIN of the person who is hosting the auction doesn't match the person who is asking for money, then it's someone else!

What else can you do?

• Always report the scammer to the site they're attempting to scam on.
• Report the fraud to Paypal directly.  They can't scam if they don't have a Paypal account.

Login to your Paypal account

Scroll all the way down to "Contact"

Scroll down to "Message Us"

Leave a screenshot and a written report on the user.

Paypal will automatically censor any emails or links you put into the chat, but they can still see them.  Paypal will then file a report on the user:

Thank you to Noahasai for granting me permission to leave his name uncensored for the sake of this entry.  He's a wonderful artist, so please give him some love on FA.

https://www.furaffinity.net/user/noahasai