Yep, these have been pretty common for almost 3-4 years now.
More frequent now since Facebook has no moderation and reports are meaningless.
First of all is important to recognize the way you get these type of messages:
- By sharing your work in a group/community (Publicly and without admin/mods) oriented in art & commissions.
- They track words and hashtags such as "Services" "Commission" "Price" and such.
- Most of the time they start like bots, they'll reply fast based on what you reply for their script/auto-replies, if you're outside their script, then they'll switch to an actual person to try to lure you in.
The most obvious thing you need to pay attention to is the following:
- They'll start with simple "Hello" "Are you available for..." and such
- They won't ask about your Terms, prices, nor anything
- In order to look more genuine, they take advantage of artist overspeaking about their own service, and use that to pretend to proceed with the buying
- Some are dumb and use "inches" or "Centimeters" as if you were doing a traditional illustration
- Some will have a sense of urgency to pay and being "overly generous"
- They'll try to ask for your real name and where you live in order to send you their fake e-mail
- They'll send the fake e-mail if you give it away, never do it.
- As previously mentioned, checking their profiles and activity is important (In Facebook is normal to check their names in the groups they are in or public posts, and usually they copy-paste the same "omg I love your art, DM me" or "Are you open for commissions" or they only give likes to people with posts themed in commissions
Obviously, is important to know and to always be up to date with the information of your virtual wallet and such.
From in which language they communicate to you, how they refer to you, where does the message falls, and such.
If you're planning on taking commissions, never give your e-mail away.
Use invoices, remove your personal information from these and send them as a link, no need to exchange names or emails.
Or you can try to use Ko-Fi or make the client use a Google form, scammers simply will give up and stop answering or try to lure you back to do the whole thing through DMs.
Anyone with two fingers in front of them knows that NO ONE commissions an artist many pieces as a first time client, nor tries to pay from $50 to $300 USD. Most of the time, first time clients will go for the cheapest option and be super protective of the whole process, since they too will suspect you're the scammer.