Public Service Announcement for the Fiber Arts Community: How to Deal with Scammers on Social Media

Evanita Montalvo

6 hours ago

8 min read

The fiber arts community has been experiencing a high concentration of scammer activity on social media especially on FB but not limited to it.. These scammers try to lull the community into a false sense of safety in order to scam the community.

What Are These Scammers Doing?

Facebook scammers participate in engagement farming, using automated bots to build up credibility, steal personal information, and/or sell products that they do not physically own. These scammers run what look like on the surface level legitimate community members but they do so by scraping content from the community and posting it as their own. They also infiltrate groups to gain admin status and turn the group into a place they can gather content from its real members especially destash listings. While admining these groups they collect destash listing posts so they can mass post them to other groups to scam our community out of money by selling non existent items.

How Can You Tell An Account is a Scammer?

One of the key ways to identify scammer accounts is to check for inconsistencies in their posting. Here are a list of things to keep an eye out for.

Do the hands in their photos appear the same or are there a variety of different hands in their various photos and videos?
Do they post photos of people and are the consistently the same people or a bunch of different people? (sometimes they steal portraits from the community as well).
Are they participating in numerous types of crafts and does their quality of work vary drastically? In terms of quality of work do they post newbie type work in some posts and yet clearly skilled work in another post within the same type of craft?
Does their photography style look different across various posts with some looking polished while others may be fuzzy, blurry, or different in formatting or location (such as physical location as well as different flooring or surfaces)?
Are they selling an insane amount of stuff, that's a huge red flag.
Do they ask questions in their posts but don't necessarily interact with the comments on their postings?
Do you remember seeing a particular post but it was posted by someone else?

These are some of the red flags to keep an eye out for.

How Can You Tell A Group is Run by Scammers?

Before joining a group, it's wise to, if possible, do a background check on the admin/mods to see if their content matches what you would expect from the group. Do the people maintaining the group seem like real people, if not it's likely best to stay clear of that group. Oftentimes, these spam bot groups have tons of real people who have no idea that their participation is just feeding the engagement farming and credibility of these scam accounts.

When checking out the admin of a group keep an eye out for the red flags mentioned above. You can also check what sort of posts are the admin posting within the group? While in the group you can click on their avatar or name to see what all they have posted in the group.

This is an example of a Admin of the group Spinning, Wheels, Looms & File Tools For Sale. The admin was posting TONS of for sale posts including several where they were trying to sell MY personal wheels that have never been up for destash.

One of the example posts the Admin posted. This wheel is not capable of Art Yarn and should only cost $399 not $650!

The following are all groups known to be run by scammers. Many of them have a large amount of participants which these scammers are using to farm for content.

The admin of these group are all scammers that have vague community terminology names. Sometimes these types of groups were formally legitimate groups but then one of the admin accidentally got scammed out of their password and then lost access to the group while the scammers took it over.

The admin of this group are ALL relatively new accounts. This is a huge red flag.

I'm in a group and someone has made a post or comment about checking out a different group

This is a very common bait tactic for scammers. They will go to various legitimate groups and post about checking out a new group. If you come across something like this, avoid clicking on any links as this could be malicious content such as a page that looks like Facebook and but you aren't signed in. This can be a way to get people to give out their passwords unintentionally. If they provide the name of the group you can input it into your search to go to the group directly in a safe way to do research. It's always best to exercise caution to avoid being lured into an unsafe situation.

Here is one example I came across where a scammer tried to post to one of my groups to get folks to join a scam group. The Daedalus Flock group received the following join request from a person trying to promote a new group. I checked out the group, and it's private; however, I was able to check the admin of the group. One of the admins, I recognized her face immediately as Galina of Carry.Cherry, but the name associated with the account was Katie Reeves of Lewiston, Maine. In this situation the scammer is trying to simulate being a real person by gathering photos from a real community member but not going by the persons actual name.

Exercise caution when clicking links! Sometimes they can take you off Facebook to a Facebook looking website to nab your password information.

This person stole Galina's portraits. She is a spinner who lives in Russia and clearly does not live in Maine.

I Want to Buy Something Via Destash But I'm Afraid of Getting Scammed

It can be very unnerving trying to buy something online when you can't see the item in person and be sure that the seller is legitimate. There are some things you can keep in mind to help to

This is an example of a scam destash listing. They clearly don't understand what each wheel is good for as the Sparrow is not an art yarn spinner and the pricing is way off base.

Make sure the seller knows what they are selling. Sometimes it's noticeable that the seller doesn't actually know what they are selling.
Don't be afraid to ask questions. Certain questions can help weed out scammers who don't actually understand the thing they are trying to sell.
Inquire about getting additional photos. Scammers often pull from other peoples photos so asking for additional photos can help.
Check the retail value of what is being sold. If the listing is grossly undervalued or overvalued exercise caution. Due to the high demand for our wheels, we have noticed that more often than not wheels are being destashed for their retail value or slightly under.
Has the seller been active in the community in the past? Check their account to see when they joined the group and if they have made past postings to the community. If they have just recently joined the group or do not have any prior activity in the group exercise caution.
Check the seller's profile to see what sort of stuff they have posted.
For your safety, we strongly recommend against using the "Pay friends and family PayPal".

Is there anything we can do against these scammers?

Yes! There is a variety of things we can do to help combat against these scammers. If you have found an account that you believe is posting other peoples' work without their permission reach out to the original person who posted the content to let them know. It's always wise to go directly to the source to make sure A. they are aware of the situation and B. the content has indeed be posted without permission.

If you know for certain they are stealing content you can report their account to Facebook and have others report it as well.

If you find an account stealing your content let your friends/followers know and have them leave comments on their post mentioning who the original author of the post is and that the post were stolen. I have found this extremely helpful. This let's their followers know that this account is a scam and then the scammer has to spend time cleaning up the mess.

If you find yourself in a group that is controlled by scammers check the member list and let all your friends who are also part of that group know that way they can leave the group.

The more we spread the word and the more we draw attention to the scammers so that folks make their ability to exist on social media difficult, the more likely they'll withdraw because their time is being wasted. Please exercise caution and report scams and fraudulent postings. The more they are reported, the more difficult it will be for them to continue these malicious activities.

Can we really make a difference?

I believe we can make a difference and making their social media life difficult will work! I recently had several of my posts stolen by the account Antique Loom Collective. I had asked my followers to leave comments on their post and well they apparently were VERY not happy about that. My MIL who didn't quite understand the situation, decided to contact them via PM to plead to them to remove the content. What they responded back with was quite interesting.

MIL's appeal to the scammer: "Dear antique collective! My daughter in law Evanita Montalvo is a very upright person and someone stol her photos and now you blocked her! She is tring to appeal to you in this case would you please please help her to clear this up. She is a bright and warm soul. Thank you ever so much for your kindness and considerations!" The Scammer's Response:

"I already gave her credit. She didn’t want to listen to me and the way she spoke was rude. I shared her work and and put a link under the post. I couldn’t put it under all but I did put it there. All right to her. But o found no need to explain to her after how rude she was. Everyone she got to came and started writing comments under the posts that will make one mad. I simply deleted the photos I helped her share and I hope everything is okay now. Also I blocked everyone who ever commented under. They were just going along without knowing anything. Next time let them check the links first before writing anything anywhere.

Hope you all stay safe. I’m sorry for not reaching out to her before sharing her work. Like I said I did give her the credit but no one was patient enough to go through the posts and look for it. And please tell her to stop sending more people my way because I will have them reported. Thank you"The scam account NEVER credited me, linked to me, or contacted me in any way. The scammer acts like a naive innocent but I assure you these scammers are very well versed in their craft of lies and deceit in order for them to make a living off the theft of others. I hope that anyone reading this finds this information helpful. We must do what we can to protect our community. It's so easy to fall prey to these scammers. It's sickening that these people try to make a living at the expense of us. If anyone has any other helpful advise please reach out to me so I can update this blog further. Please feel free to share this blog and spread the word so we can protect our own.

- Evanita