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Beware of this photography scam (and learn how to spot it)

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Unfortunately, if you use the internet for work, you probably already know that new scams and scammers pop up every day. Recently, I’ve seen the rise in popularity of a new scam targeting photographers. I don’t want to see anyone, especially other photographers, being scammed out of their hard earned money.

If you’ve ever heard of the check scam, this is a pretty similar beast. In this post I’ll share 10 Red Flags you need to look out for to avoid being scammed. As always, check out the video below, or if you enjoy reading, continue scrolling!

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Amazon shoppers order expensive cameras, receive cat food and shoes instead

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Several expensive cameras purchased on Amazon have magically turned into cat food, according to furious shoppers. And it’s not just cameras – it appears that some sellers have been scamming people for all kinds of expensive items, like smartphones and computer parts. According to dozens of furious shoppers, they’ve received stuff like pet food, cheap shoes, and surgical masks instead of the high-priced tech goods they’d ordered.

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I was almost robbed in my own home – beware the new scam targeting photographers

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There are a lot of scammers targetting photographers, it seems like. I’ve been lucky enough not to have been affected by these, until recently. There is a new scam aimed at photographers selling their used equipment, and I almost fell for it. I want to get the word out so that you know what to watch out for and don’t fall victim to these people.

I’ve been selling a bit of photography equipment on Facebook Marketplace, and so far, I’ve never had an issue. However, a fellow photographer friend of mine had a terrible experience where he had a camera stolen via a fairly sophisticated con. I didn’t believe he could have fallen for it, until it almost happened to me.

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Scammers using AI images of fake earthquake victims to steal donations

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Some of the images we’ve seen recently of the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria have been heartbreaking. So far, more than 35,000 people have lost their lives, and those that have survived are facing a bitter, homeless winter. But some people have been taking advantage of this and, according to a BBC report, have been using AI-generated images to create fake donation pages online.

These scammers are channeling honest donations away from the people who actually need them into their own PayPal and crypto wallets. The cover image above was one such scam that was posted 8 times in just a few hours on Twitter. Neither firefighter nor child exists, they were created by Midjourney.

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Wedding photographer “scams” couple with blurry photos, ghosts them without a refund

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A couple from Canada paid a $1,500 deposit after finding the “perfect” photographer for their wedding. However, when the photos arrived, they turned out to be a blurry mess. They say that the photographer ghosted them when they tried to reach him, and they haven’t heard from him since.

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Man orders $3,000 Sony a7 IV, gets a box of white powder instead

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An Edinburgh man was excited to get his Sony a7 IV he ordered online. However, he was scammed and received a suspicious package instead of the £2,400 camera.

When the package arrived at his address, there was no camera inside, or anything related to photographic gear. instead, the man received a box that contained bags of suspicious white powder.

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Scam alert: Beware of phishing emails pretending to come from Fujifilm

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If you’re a Fujifilm user and customer, pay close attention to emails you get from the company. People have received spam emails that claim to be from Fuji, even using the brand’s domain in the email address. It looks like they’ve reached so many people that Fujifilm Japan issued an official warning to its customers.

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Not surprisingly, those “30 terabyte” SSDs you can buy at Walmart and AliExpress are all a scam

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It’s probably not that much of a surprise to most of us who actually use large storage drives but there seems to be a big trend lately, a whole flurry of drives popping up on sites like AliExpress and even Walmart claiming some pretty insane capacities at an even more insane price. We’ve seen this before with microSD cards from generic brands that claim to be 1TB when they’re not even close, but I haven’t seen it quite this blatant before.

The 1TB microSD card scam is kind of believable because 1TB microSD cards do actually exist and we’ve reviewed samples from SanDisk and Silicon Power here on DIYP. But a 30TB portable SSD? This capacity doesn’t even exist from the big brands yet. How about 60TB? Yeah, I’ve seen those for sale, too. And if the capacity alone wasn’t enough to stick a honking big red flag right in front of your face, what if I told you some of those “60TB” ones were less than $15?

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Scam “photographer” extorts money from famous satirist Bryan Dawe

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Australian satirist, comedian, writer, and artist Bryan Dawe found himself in the middle of a scam that sounds too terrible to be true. In spring last year, he stumbled upon a Facebook post from a “photographer” who was collecting money for her “broken camera.” Dawe wanted to land a hand, organizing a fundraiser for the woman who posed as the photographer who had her camera destroyed.

The whole thing turned out to be a scam. And it escalated so badly that Dawe was forced to close all his social media accounts and he has been receiving extortion threats from the scammers  ever since.

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PSA: Miami Vibes Magazine doesn’t want your photos, it’s a scam

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We recently heard from several photographers who received an email from someone claiming to be the creative director of Miami Vibes Magazine, offering to hire them for a fashion shoot. While the detailed creative brief made the project seem legitimate at first glance, my conversation with the real editor-in-chief of Miami Vibes confirmed that it was indeed a hoax. Let’s take a look at the scammer’s pitch and the warning signs to look out for.

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