BeforeItsNews only exists through ads. We ask all patriots who appreciate the evil we expose and want to
help us savage the NWO with more Truth to disable your ad-blocker on our site only so we can grow and expose more evil! Funding
gives us more weapons! Thank you patriots! Oh and If you disable the Ad-blocker - on your deathbed you will receive total
consciousness. So you got that going for you...which is nice!
% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.
Apologies to this beautiful blue predator of the deep for using his image.
It’s getting real now. I’ve got “Julia Simpson” on the hook and she’s fighting hard. I’ve stalled Scammy for a week, making him think I’m dumb enough to send both the painting and a huge refund check in the same package, without waiting for his bogus $1835 check to clear. It’s Saturday afternoon, April 5. I’m going to cut and paste my notes from that day.
April 5, 2014: About 3 pm. I get a call. I can hear a man’s voice say Hello? in a foreign accent. It’s tinny and distant. Liam answers at the same time. We both ask, “Hello?” and the man hangs up. He wasn’t figuring on getting two people. About 20 minutes later he calls again.
“Julie?” he asks. It sounds like “Zhulleh.” Again the accent, the tinny, distant, echoey sound. He sounds like he’s calling from the bottom of a well in Timbuktu.
“Yes?”
“This is Julia Simpson’s husband. I want to know if you send the painting.”
Hmmm. What an odd way to introduce oneself, without using your own name. A chill goes down my guts to my feet. I don’t say anything for a moment.
“How did you get my phone number? Oh, right. I gave it to you. Hey. What’s your
phone number?”
He mumbles something like, “You do not need this phone number I am calling from, it is different phone.”
I can’t place the accent, but it’s heavy. Maybe Middle Eastern. Maybe even Russian. His voice is deep and very dark.
“Wow,” I say, stalling a bit. I put on an air of innocence, but at the same time drench my voice in sarcasm. “You sound like you’re in a foreign country. Very far away!”
“Did you send the painting?”
Oh you creep. At that moment anger explodes in little fireworks behind my eyes. I hate what he does for his miserable living, hate that he exploits people who can’t afford to be robbed, hate that he’s been posing as “Julia Simpson;” hate that he’s been so bold as to invade my home with his greed, his desire to get something for nothing, and try to rob me on top of it. I hate his icky voice. I want to smash him like a roach.
“How stupid do you think I am?” I hiss.
“Very very,” he snaps. It sounds like, “Beddy beddy.”
“Really. Very very stupid,” I reply. I’m winding up to give him both barrels. I’m going to tell him he’s a scum-sucking parasite who preys on innocent people, no better than an engorged, stinking tick on life.
There’s a rustle and a click. He knows I’ve nailed him, and hangs up on me, a coward through and through.I hold the phone and stare at it as if he might reach out of it and grab my throat.
My heart is beating out of my chest. I am completely creeped out that he’s called me at home from whatever rathole he lives in, in whatever country he inhabits. It takes me awhile to compose myself and start to laugh. I realize that, in a way, I’ve won this sick game he’s playing. I’ve wasted almost a month of his time, stringing him along with emails that gave him almost what he was after, but not quite. That make him think he had me dead to rights. And then I’d slip out of his grasp again. I’ve won because I’ve figured out two of his modus operandi, and that’s armed me for any future approaches from shady art buyers. I can share my experiences here, and warn other innocent online vendors what kinds of snakes slither through the long, tangled cyberspace grass. I’ve won because I’ve learned something and lost not a cent doing it. I’ve gotten his hopes up, kept them high with my dopey friendly rube act, and when I could no longer keep the ruse up, finally and completely dashed them. He thought he’d get a painting, which he’d probably simply throw away, and $1415 out of my bank account. He got bupkis.
As long as he doesn’t call me in the middle of the night, I’m good. Whyyy did I give him my phone number?? OK, he pinked me.
–end of journal notes–
It’s June, 2015, and I haven’t gotten any calls from Spammy. In the interim, I have gotten several inquiries, all from overseas, wanting to talk with me about purchasing paintings. And I’ve ignored them.
In the end, “Julia Simpson” did me a favor, and that’s a favor I’m passing on to you. Don’t take any wooden nickels.
Julie Zickefoose is a painter and writer who lives on a nature sanctuary in Appalachian Ohio. She is the author of Letters from Eden and The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds With Common Birds, due in spring 2012. http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com
