The "Unlock Your PayPal" Scam

Photo by Brett Jordan on Pexels

There is a specific scam making the rounds in art communities right now, and it follows a pattern predictable enough that once you know it, you will spot it from a mile away. Here’s how it works.

The Hook

It usually starts with someone reaching out about a commission. The catch is the price. Say you normally charge fifteen dollars for a piece. This client offers three hundred. Twenty times your rate, no negotiation, no haggling over details. Just an enthusiastic yes to whatever you’re asking, plus a number that makes your heart pound.

That gap between what you charge and what they offer is the whole point. It is flattering, it feels like a lucky break, and it is specifically designed to short-circuit the part of your brain that would normally ask questions. When you are a new artist trying to build a client base, and someone shows up acting like your work is worth twenty times what you charge, it is very easy to just feel grateful and get to work.

The Build-Up

You do the piece. Maybe it takes a few days, maybe you are squeezing it in between other responsibilities like exams or a full time job. You deliver a watermarked preview, standard practice, and ask for payment before sending the final file.

The client says they already paid. You check your account and nothing is there. Then they point you toward your email spam folder, and sure enough there is a message that looks like it is from PayPal. It says a deposit came through, but because you have never received a payment that large before, your account needs to be verified or unlocked. To do that, you are told to send an additional amount, somewhere in the range of two hundred dollars, and you are reassured you will get that money right back once your account is cleared.

This is the moment the scam actually works or falls apart. The email looks official enough at a glance. It has the right logo, the right colors, even a plausible explanation for why you have not seen the money yet. And because you have already sunk four or five days of work into this piece, you are motivated to believe it. Nobody wants to think the last few days were wasted, so the brain looks for a reason to keep going instead of a reason to stop.

The Steal

If you send that unlock fee, that is the money that actually leaves your account. There was never a real three hundred dollar payment waiting for you. The client is not going to pay double, and they are not going to pay at all. The email is fake, sent from an address that only looks like PayPal at a glance. Real PayPal notifications come from paypal.com addresses, never from a generic Gmail or Outlook account with a string of numbers tacked on.

Some artists get pressured into borrowing that upfront fee from a friend or family member because they do not have it sitting around, which makes the loss sting even more.

The good news is this scam has a tell that never changes: legitimate payment platforms do not ask you to pay money to receive money (see the pay to unlock scam). If anyone tells you that you need to send funds to unlock, verify, or release a payment, that is the entire scam in one sentence. Check the sender’s email domain, do not act on anything in a spam folder without verifying it directly through the official app or website, and if something feels rushed or urgent, slow down on purpose. Scammers rely on you moving fast. You don’t have to.