**** ALERT

**** ALERT On Friday I was pleased to receive a telephonic enquiry about artwork for sale on the Art Images website. The caller was a lady who called herself Sonia Goldstone and she told me she was from Rainbow Architects (part of the Rainbow Group). They were in the final throes of completing a house for a client in Venezuela and had a budget of R80k available for the art. There was an urgency as the client was moving in this week and the artwork had to be installed before they arrived. I put together a proposed collection for her, she selected a number of items and requested an invoice which I sent her on Saturday morning. Within a few minutes I received a sms notifying me of a 'Direct Credit Eft Deposit into account *****' with the invoice number as a reference and the Nedbank Contact Centre number was provided. Of course that's not the usual way my bankers notify me of payments so a red flag went up. I supp**** dear Sonia with a few more photographs of art that I'm selling on behalf of clients and she selected another piece, along with suggested framing needed, without enquiring about the price. Another red flag went up. Early in the afternoon she called to let me know her driver was on the way to collect the art. Of course I didn't agree to that and told her she could collect on Wednesday, which was the day she originally indicated as her deadline. I was comfortable with that date as any payment made over the weekend would be in my account by then. Needless to say, no payment has arrived and Ms Goldstone wasn't able to take my call or respond to my suggestion that she adopt a more sophisticated approach to her ****ming.

After the fact I checked the address she gave me for the invoice on Google Maps to find that its a dingy looking travel agency in Brooklyn, Pretoria. Rainbowgroup.co.za is a site that my web security warned me not to enter and a company called Rainbow Group in Pinetown, KZN is in a completely different industry. Had I done these simple checks before curating a collection for her I would've saved myself a lot of time.

How stupid do these people think we are??