A lot of artists, makers, anyone selling something online, get emails like this. I started tapping mine as spam, and now my spam filter catches most of them.

Your suspicion started when he balked at paying through normal channels, good on you!

A good practice is to copy-and-paste a couple lines for a Google search. Scammers send out a jillion, and you'll find a lot of other people who have gotten the same email, word for word.

Fwiw and IMHO, he probably did not find you through your publications. These scammers wouldn't take the time to do that.

“Always look on the bright side of life!”

It was so easy to spot my latest spam in my inbox. Normally I'd google some of the sentences, a quick and easy way to spot spam. Can you find the glitch they made in this one?
"Hi, and Good day
a friend of mine recommended you to me
I am looking at how I can get to buy some of your paintings as a surprise gift for my husband.
Can you send me the pic and price list or pdf file of your artworks available for sale.Thanks "

The clue?
I don't paint. :-D

The whole thing sounded totally phishy, so I ignored it.

I am wondering whether this phishing is happening from HERE at the Forum, rather than some outside source (?). Now that a scammer is pretending to be one of us.

JDA.

Way back at the beginning of internet time, I recall that a persons email could be compromised in such a way that their entire address book could be copied. It may be that a bead person somewhere has had their address book copied and the result is every other bead person they know is getting scammer emails from the list that has probably been sold multiple times by now.

My private email was hacked on new year's eve. "They" sent out emails in my name to everyone I had had contact with from there, asking them for a "favor" and directing them to a different email address that they had set up on a different provider. Quite clever really - as I said to one of my students, "half as clever as a virus," and that's high praise these days!

But really it was just another version of the old scam that has been around for decades, and, as far as I know, nobody fell for it. So, not really so clever after all.

For a while it was inconvenient, and it took me a few hours on new year's day to regain control of all my email functions. But the nice side effect was that I've been getting concerned emails from old friends, some of whom I haven't talked to for ages - lots of fond memories for a new year.

Anyway, I'm certain that none of this had anything to do with BCN. I don't use that email for this site, and I think I know the moment I opened the door to the hack. It was while I was leaving some feedback for an internet purchase. By accident, I opened the wrong link; I sensed there was something wrong with it and closed it again, but by then it was too late.

But hey, this is BCN, so I'm going to leave a photo of a small amulet I've been reacquainting myself with today. It's a small amulet/bell that was found twenty years or so ago near the Bronze Age site of Ban Chiang in Northeastern Thailand. It could be from there, but I think it may be from the Dong Son culture in northern Vietnam. It's bronze, very fragile, 23 mm high, with a loop at the back, in the form of a head that is half human and half fish or insect. It has hands or feelers or tendrils joined beneath the chin, and it expresses - for me - a truly intense feeling of vulnerability and anxiety. It's unique; nothing even slightly similar has ever been found. And maybe it resonates with what a lot of us are feeling right now.

Best wishes to all for a safe year.

Will

PS I'm a cultural historian, not an archaeologist, though I sometimes work with friends who are.

I'm glad all that is settled.

The bell is very charming—in all senses of that word.

"I'm a cultural historian, not an archaeologist, though I sometimes work with friends who are."

That's how I would describe what I do too, in some regards. (Of course, when I first heard of you, after your presentation for The Bead Society in Los Angeles, I was told you were "an archaeologist." Thus my confusion.)

I wish you a great 2022. Jamey