whatisthedeal:

scifigrl47:

missypena:

missypena:

missypena:

SCAM ALERT!! Told Magazine Inc / New Media International are scams targeting vulnerable creatives. 

They lure you in with a very professionally worded email promising an interview with their magazine, saying you were nominated for it by one of your followers. Their website is also very professional on the surface, but if you look closely you’ll notice weird things about it. Lots of photoshopped stock photos of models wearing their logo, no real content or articles, blurry images of text where articles might be.

If you say yes, they send you a link to a questionnaire where they get your personal information, along with some questions about your art peppered in. Then they’ll ask you for money so they can mail you a copy of the magazine with your interview when it’s out, and that’s where the biggest part of the scam is. Once you send them money, they disappear.

I made it to the interview phase before going NAH, (I asked them a ton of questions about where the heck their articles were and why their magazine didn’t appear in any Google searches - they ignored me and just sent their next copy/paste email in the scam - a real editor would’ve addressed my questions). Then I found more artists talking about this scam on Twitter, but I haven’t seen anything about it on Tumblr. So, here you go.

There’s a lot of scams aimed at creatives right now because many us are more vulnerable than ever. Of course I’d love a sweet interview to boost my online shop sales while my entire convention schedule is canceled. But we can outsmart them by doing research, asking questions, and warning others.

Twitter link with more info HERE.

Bumping this because the Told Magazine Inc scam has been sending lots of emails to artists again this week. Watch out for them, and ignore or block their emails if you get one.

So “Told Magazine Inc” emailed me today with this threat, all because of this tumblr post. 

I’m not sure how seriously I should take it, since it’s a bunch of very harsh emotional threats and doesn’t come off as very… professional? On one hand, I’m still 100% convinced Told Magazine Inc is a scam organization, (as of today, googling them still doesn’t bring up anything unless you do so in quotes, their website doesn’t even load, and the third hit is my tumblr so lol). On the other hand, if they’re horrible enough to try to scam small artists out of some money, then they’re horrible enough to try to sue a small artist for exposing them as a scam. I won’t be removing this post as of yet, and will be reaching out to several local lawyers for consultations on the matter.

“Despicable actions” does not sound like a lawyer was involved at all.

They said “me”. Not “us”, not “the company”, etc. They’re totally fronting.