Crafters beware, scammers are getting better at impersonations

It has become increasingly more complicated over the last year, I'll say. This started about a year ago with our craft fair last year, mostly on social media at that point in time. And there would just be messages from people claiming to be part of our organization saying we have spaces available, contact me through a direct message for your space and looking for fees as soon as you contact them. And so we had staff on that last year, nonstop deleting and reporting. people who were on our social media. And so it started early this year. It started probably five or six months ago with social media. And so we thought we were being Getting ahead of it. And so we made posts, we'll never contact you by social media, we'll be through our official email address. And then came email scams. So it went from social media, they kind of just dropped the social media. So they were obviously watching what we were doing. And then came emails impersonating us. They are trying to reach out to other organizations and what's happening in that scam. It's almost impossible to tell that it's us. It looks like us, it sounds like us, and they're directing people to an online form. So they've caught on that our application is an online form, and so they're directing people right to the online form. And until you're getting a response from that form, it's very difficult to tell that it's us, or not us. To date, we are not aware of anyone who has fallen for this. We also, unfortunately, won't know until Craft Fair Day when we're setting up and that's when those things tend to come out. There's been craft fairs. I know there was a woman from the Christmas at the Glacier that also had been scammed. There's craft fairs across the country. As we're heading into craft fair season, I'm seeing organizations post that this is happening to people. So I'm really hopeful that we don't have anyone who's fallen for it.