A scammer and a blessing
“Are you accepting work? Kindly DM me on Instagram,” read the comment on my Women’s Day TikTok post.
I perused the profile of Suzi Ben: “mother of two boys - family before everything” read her tagline.
I did as the comment requested and messaged her on Instagram. Shortly thereafter, she responded saying she just fell in love with my poetry and asked if I could write a birthday poem for her son. She would pay me $200 for the commission, should I deem that a reasonable price.
Elated was I to read such a note!
Of course I would write a poem for her son, so long as she provided his name, age, and a few personal tidbits for me to make it extra special. I dropped what I was doing that Saturday afternoon to work on the first draft. Sunday morning I finished the writing and decided that $200 warranted a little something more. I formatted the poem on a document using his favorite colors, complete with pictures of the cartoon characters his mom said he most admires.
I promptly emailed her the poem and received the response that it was “lovely”.
What a dream, I thought! To be commissioned to write a child’s birthday poem. I envisioned the family reading it aloud, sending me a video of the five year old’s reaction. Perhaps they’d have it framed in their bedroom. He would feel sooo special.
I suggested in the email that she tell me the name of her other son and their dog so I can personalize it a bit more, but her response didn’t address any of that. It actually didn’t address a thing - only that she would cut me a check from her husband’s business account as soon as possible.
I wasn’t too worried about payment - she’s a young mother providing her first born with a sincere, personalized gift, after all.
Later that night, she wrote me again to say WOOPS, the account manager wrote the check for $2000 rather than $200. What were they to do? Another check can’t be issued for six months…
Never to worry - she assured me. I could just deposit the check and send them the remaining $1800.
It smelled fishy, but I still let her send me the electronic check. After a failed attempt to deposit it on my mobile banking app, my intuition screamed that I had been scammed. I still held out tidbits of hope, and at this point just wanted some redemption, so I entertained conversation for several more days and she sent me various other checks from other accounts, all for $1000 or more, so long as I promised to send back the remainder. I read online about the dangers of depositing fake checks, and I didn’t want to run that rest. She vehemently protested using a third party app like Zelle, Venmo, or PayPal (thought that is precisely how she expected me to return her money when the time came…).
Eventually I surrendered and told her to take the poem as a gift. I thanked her for the lesson not to trust strangers on the internet (or, rather, to to establish a payment protocol up front before completing a commission).
She continued to grow angry and used her CAPS LOCKED MESSAGES to convey her annoyance with my failure to cooperate with her little scheme.
The oddest part was how often I kept going back to the conversation. It’s almost as if my body enjoyed the drama. I’d feel my heart race and my blood boil as I responded to her unruly, illogical messages. To some extent I must hav liked it, or I would have blocked her far sooner than I did. I’m still contemplating what that means about me.
When I recognized the toxicity of the exchange, and when she wouldn’t heed my repeated directive to, “please leave me alone”, I finally blocked and reported both her TikTok and Instagram accounts for attempted scams.
Ironically, in the midst of it all, I went for a somatic massage and was told by the therapist that I have forgiveness work to do. What a perfect opportunity to practice forgivenss in the moment: forgiveness for her (or whoever it is that runs that likely fake account), and forgiveness for myself - for getting my hopes up, for trusting an unknown profile, for engaging with her for longer than necessary.
Other than teaching me a lesson on forgiveness and how to conduct business online, another brilliant opportunity came out of the whole exchange:
a fresh offering now listed on my Commercials page.
I posted the poem I wrote to little Ezra (assuming he actually exists and its actually his birthday) as an example. Inspired by this, I am accepting commission based work to craft custom poems for birthdays and other special occasions for legitimate, interested customers.
Please spread the word ✨
(and don’t get scammed out there!)