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A popular event is being impersonated to scam prospective vendors, by pretending to be event leadership and offering vendor buy-ins.
Katie Mabry van Dieren is in her 16th year running the Strawberry Swing Indie Craft Fair's Holiday Swing, which will happen in November.
WATCH | Impersonation scam impacts KC event by using likeness, name to trick vendors
As a vendor fair many sign up to participate, however this year, she received a scam tip from a perspective vendor of someone impersonating her event.
"At this point I have 4 different emails that are impersonating us," Mabry van Dieren said.
One of the emails read: "Hello, I hope you are having a great day. I found your business page while looking for vendors and wanted to connect to see if you might be interested in joining our upcoming event as a vendor."
It was signed saying, "best regards, Haley Erickson, vendor relations and logistics coordinator, the 16th Annual Holiday Swing."
Erickson is not an employee or contractor, Mabry van Dieren uses.
That was then followed by a request for a vendor fee in later emails.
"They use the forms I use for my application and cloned it," Mabry van Dieren said. "I mean it was pretty much word for word. It made me feel so yuck. It made me feel really gross. It made me feel; It's how I speak, you know, it's my wording,"
The vendor spotted inconsistencies and that's when they reached out to me Mabry van Dieren.
"So you can see that's my graphic. That's my graphic," Van Dieren said showing her flyer on the email.
In turn, there are multiple victims in this scam.
"There's a set of victims that are the vendors who pay for a spot that doesn't exist, and there's the business whose name is borrowed," Josh Planos said.
He's the Better Business Bureau's Vice President of Marketing and Communication.
He said there are ways to spot impersonation scams, but the scammers are getting clever.
"It's easy for scammers to copy legitimate organizers and organizations, flyers," Planos said. He pointed to social media posts being a free for all for scammers.
They'll also find and use your website, some even creating a website that directly mimics your own.
It's important to take the time to evaluate an email that might be suspicious. One mistake or classic scam move and you may beat the scammer. A key red flag is an unusual payment request.
"Anytime somebody is requesting for a private non-traditional form of payment, that's typically a red flag to look out for," Planos said.
This could be bitcoin, gift cards or even person to person payment apps.
Mabry van Dieren said it was the payment point that led to her finding out about the scam.
"The vendor started thinking it was fishy because the booth fee payment was a Zelle or venmo," Mabry van Dieren said.
If you spot a scam it's best to report it even if you weren't impacted.
"The best thing you can do is to speak up because unfortunately the world is filled with people who don't, and all that ever protects is the perpetrator of the crime," Planos said.
At the end of the day these are crimes and there are laws to protect you as the consumer.
Several agencies offer services to report scams. Reports can be filed with the Attorney General's Office, FBI and even local police to name a few.
"I hope people didn't fall prey to this," Mabry van Dieren said. "I just find it very yucky that they went after an art fair, like a local art fair."
For Mabry van Dieren, she's filing a police report. She's also reported the cloned application forms to Google and both scam forms were deactivated.
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