RECENTLY, local mural artist Enni, who posts on Instagram at @ennimato_art, shared a story about her encounter with a con artist.
According to her, the con artist – who uses various identities including Jessie, Janice, and Yan Chie – had been approaching other mural artists on Instagram and pretending to be a client.
The scammer would ask for designs before ignoring the artist afterwards.
The con artist contacted Enni using the “Jessie” identity. After Enni sent over a mural wall art design, “Jessie” never got back to her, so Enni just assumed that “Jessie” was a bad client. However, she found out that “Jessie” had actually stolen her design and painted the mural in a restaurant.
When Enni asked the owner of the restaurant about it, the owner told her that “Jessie” vanished even before she completed the painting and could no longer be contacted.
To Enni’s horror, she found out that the con artist had been following her for quite a while, and had even been watching her IG Stories.
Other mural artists started to speak up about their own experiences with this so-called “Jessie”.
Faidah Nazeri @faidahartlife also chimed in with her encounter with the artist, who went by the name “Yan Chie” during their communications. “Yan Chie” had promised Faidah RM150 per day to work together on a wall art mural. Faidah had worked for almost a week when the monsoon season suddenly began, so they had to pause work for a while.
A month later, their client called them to continue the wall mural but when Faidah asked “Yan Chie” about it, she told Faidah to continue working without her because she was pregnant and couldn’t continue. That was when Faidah found out that she had taken the deposit of RM5,000 from the client and had absconded with it.
After a few mural artists spoke up about her, “Yan Chie” blocked them and changed her profile bio which initially said “mural artist”.
In such a difficult time, it’s sad that an artist would plagiarise and scam other artists like that.
