Athariya-Jeunesse Illustrator Scam

Hi All,

My illustration

Thought I'd just post about this company who are based in Paris and looking for illustrators. I received a nice email before Christmas that goes like this:

employing illustrators

Inbox

x

Sent Messages

x

Dar el Athariya parisweb75@gmail.com	11/12/2013
to me

Hi,

We are a publishing house. Our office is situated in France “Paris”. We are specialized in theproduction of educational products for children, such as books, books with CD, puzzles, cards, posters and different other products. We have a large daily needs in terms of illustrations, since we have many projects under development. 

We are attracted by your portfolio which is very interesting in terms of illustrations and color choices.

Since we have many projects under development, we are looking for illustrators to illustrate for small children under the age of 9 years old.

Please try to respond as soon as possible on parisweb75@gmail.com in order to have an agreement and to start a long work relationship with us.

We are looking forward for your soon reply.

Best regards.

M.Chalal.

15 emails later (negotiating price etc) and they offered me a job to work on illustrations for a number of publications. This was just before Christmas to start in the New Year. I haven't heard from them since and have found another blog about this scam which you might also find interesting.

http://kmcmorris.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/how-to-spot-art-scam.html

I have no idea what information they were trying to get from this but just wanted to make other people aware who are in a similar position to me. Illustrators are far too trusting and unfortunately I was one of them. The moral of this story is your time is precious, don't provide illustrations without being paid.