“Dear Gallery,
I write today to inform you of an online fraud, based upon information conveyed to us by six of our exhibiting galleries in the last few days. By sharing this information, we want to protect you from such criminal activities. Over the past three weeks galleries have been contacted by a man who is calling himself Mr. Steve Black, claiming to live at 40 Lavender Gardens, Battersea, London SW11 1DJ, his email is: sb47868@gamil.com.
Mr. Black has contacted these galleries through the online catalog at the Art Basel web page and requested information on the gallery and available works. He appears to buy one or several works from jpg images sent to him, unusual for someone who appears to have no understanding about the gallery and the artist at the time of the initial contact. Mr. Black then requests an invoice and sends a check with an amount much higher than the invoice. He next tries to make the gallery believe that he accidentally overpaid, and asks for an immediate refund by wire transfer of the overpaid sum. Yet the checks he sent, we were told, turned out to be fake and will not be cashed by the gallery’s bank.
We hope that the distribution of this information will prevent any further harm to our galleries. While we have already heard of six such cases, we ask you to also be alert for possible new names and new identities using a similar scam. Please let me know if you have any questions or have had similar experiences in recent times.” [The Baer Faxt]