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Before the incident, I often repost my commission advertisement on various of art servers. Roughly a simple ad with low-ish prices ($15-20) compared to others advertising up to $30-40+, along with this fact, I was a first time commissioner with 0 experience apart from art trades and collaborations. On August 12, I received a friend request from Alastra (Client) at around midnight and they messaged me that they’d like to commission me. I was ecstatic seeing this during then, but I didn’t accept their friend request and reply until the next morning. August 13, From here the process was going well, we were communicating, their reply’s were fast, they did as I asked (filling out my google form for character info, “reading” my carrd) until I got to confirming the payment process, they asked if they could “pay with a $40 Amazon gift card” none of my terms of service said I excepted any gift card except for Apple, I didn’t have any red flags yet and so I thought perhaps they couldn’t pay through these other payment options I replied saying “I’m not sure, Codashop doesn’t allow any payments except through paypal, venmo, etc” They didn’t reply to me until I added “but I do accept Apple gift cards as payment instead” They replied fast ((At this point my mistake started here bc based on other accounts of them they blocked/ ghosted the artist after telling them they need to pay through these options. Gift cards were their way of swindling through)) I got to work quickly and sent them the first two halfbody sketches of their commission, They asked for a few changes, I complied i asked if things were alright with the sketches, they complied the first red flag I blindly encountered was asking for my 50% payment after the sketch (total for the commission was 30 so they had to pay $15) they avoided this by convincing me that they’d pay at the end when there’s a watermark on the drawing, this is so to make sure that they do like the commission and they would pay extra for the work. They were successful in convincing me, I saw on a few other commissioners for reference that they do a similar format to this as well and so I thought it’d be ok to try it out. August 16 - 17 a line-art and flat color was sent August 20 the coloring process started nothing fishy happened here, only reassurance that my work was going well. The process continued from me sending my w.i.p. for review and revision. By August 21, I was officially done with the commission I sent them a drawing with my watermark (top to bottom of the image for extra measures) and sent it to them. Strangely they didn’t reply, as fast as they normally would, despite their profile (little dot on the corner) saying that they were actively on. I didn’t think much of it but consider the fact that they’re a person with a life so I shouldn’t bother them. August 22, by now I got worried they weren’t replying and by now it was around 5. I remembered that we were mutuals on a few servers so I searched through those only to realize that they left them. I checked their bio to see if they really did and I saw the words “no servers in common” and on discord if you don’t share a similar server with the other (unless you friend them) you can’t message the person anymore. It took me a while to realize that they scammed me after they ghosted me and blocked me when receiving the watermarked drawing of mine. As of August 28, the time I made this beware, they are still using my drawing as their pfp. I do advice to keep an eye out on this person as their main focus of commissions are hazbin hotel. Their discord name are names of characters from the show so its difficult to find any true social medias from them unless they share any of my drawings around. If you do ever see a repost of the following commission images please report them. ((Extra: this story probably infuriated a lot of you bc I was so blinded to so many red flags that the client replied with. If anything it was also my fault too for falling for a scam and as of writing this, it urks me to read over how naive I was through the process. No I’m not asking for pity, I’m asking for people doing first time commissions to stand your ground and go with the process that you want to do as it may save you from being scammed like me))