Hey, listen up! There's a scammer impersonating me on Telegram, reaching out to the YCH buyers via there and sending out invoices in my name. DO NOT PAY THEM! And report them if you can! They change their avatar to the avatar of the artist and the username to something resemblant and request a payment via Telegram.

WHAT THEY DO
This scammer is very concerned about credibility.
The scammer's profile had a username resemblant to mine, my screen name (it's kinda adorable they even made an effort and adorned it with a little horse emoji x'D but yeah, such details are dangerous, as they do build more credibility). They used my profile picture from here too.

The scammer reached out to the auctioner at my recent YCH and said they won the auction. Then, they requested reference pictures and, to gain even more credibility, offered a quick sketch to confirm "everything is alright". also offering small changes to the original YCH idea. Then provided the auctioner with their paypal adress before making any art.

You can see the screens from the conversation here:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/58579196/

Btw, I'm curious what would they do if someone would refuse to continue the transaction before any actual art gets made X') I do believe they'd abort, but it's my fantasy that they actually sit there and try to very quickly analyze my style to be able to provide a credible sketch xD

Also, on the last screen from a couple of minutes after the encounter you can see that the scammer's profile was changed and now features a name Mekk and t.me with the name of elijahmure. I did a little investigation and both of those usernames can be found on FA and seem connected. While Mekk has no uploads, elijahmure has a couple of arts of characters uploaded, all with a disclaimer that the character was "created/bought and owned by Mekk". Perhaps elijahmure is a new account of Mekk, perhaps they are separate people. None of them seems to have any active YCHs or sales going on on FA, so they would be a weird target (unless they have sales elsewhere and the scammer targets multiple portals like DA, SoFurry, etc). But it also would be weird for the impersonator to use their real data on a scam account, so it's very possible the Mekk/elijahmure are innocent artist/s who were to be targeted next and the scammer once again paid a lot of attention to the details using the possible old and new usernames to create credibility. Or perhaps there's some other reason, I just don't want anyone to go hating on them without unambiguous proofs. Especially that afterwards the profile once again changed, this time to some cyrylics (I don't have a screen).


WHAT I DO & WHAT YOU CAN DO
I do not have telegram in the first place. About YCHs - I will only contact you via FA notes, where it's easy to verify it's really me - someone can get a similar username and upload my arts, but can't copy my stats, or the comments I'm getting from all of you which are all across my uploads, so pay attention to that too, please. The only time I would contact you via other route, like Discord or email is when we've worked together before and I know you prefer it this way, and it's already proven it's you and you have it proven it's me on the other end.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
The auctioner cleverly realized what's going on and contacted me via a note to confirm whether it was really me. The scammer got no money and instead got reported as a fraudulent account to PayPal and Telegram.
Please, you too be careful and feel free to contact me about any doubts. I understand how important safety on the Internet is. Like, come on! I will surely support you with getting the money you wish to throw at me where you want it to be ;P and not to some scammer. It's my family's livelihood after all ._.

To sum it up, stay safe out there and be vigilant.