Scams and Con Artists

One of the Experiences that made for my Bad Summer of 2008

Recently I was a Crime Victim when my wallet was stolen. This experience was very unnerving because it was so simple and easy for the pick pockets to get at my wallet. It was stuffed with all of my personal information. That was, I now recognize, a mistake. I now know it is a good idea to pare down the number of credit cards and remove personal information from your wallet, including the Medicare card that I usually carry.

I had been so incensed about the loss of my wallet that I began my own personal investigation into where the money had been spent and whether or not there had been security cameras in the stores where the credit cards were used. I passed this information to the police and waited to hear if the perpetrators had been arrested. I had the unrealistic hope that the people involved would be caught and sent to jail. That justice would prevail.

In the meantime I cancelled my credit cards, called the credit agencies and went about my usual business.

Catching the Criminal

One month after my wallet had been stolen I got a call from a police officer, detective Frank Jelenski, asking if I had a daughter by the name of Margaret Richman. The woman had tried to cash a check for $15,000.00. Her driver's license had that name on it and my address. They found stolen checks and several hundred dollars worth of counterfeit money in the trunk of her car.

I have no daughter by that name. The woman in custody must have stolen my license and altered it. The police officer told me that thieves sell stolen driver's licenses and that it is not hard to change the names and photos on them. However, they were more concerned about the fact that she had checks from my bank in her possession and that they believe she was part of a large counterfeiting operation that was using the bank to launder money by switching counterfeit money for genuine currency.

In any case, police were engaging in an undercover operation to arrest the entire gang. In the meantime, the police were concerned about my safety and would be sending a patrol car around my neighborhood to check on me during the night. Also, they may tap my phone with my permission because they feared someone might be wanting to get in touch with me. I would be informed of any further developments.

An Undercover Operation


The following day I received another call from Officer Jelenski. He told me that the woman who had picked my pocket had been arrested and she and the other woman were cellmates in Federal penitentiary serving for the crime of extortion and embezzling. They also had information that a third woman worked at the bank where I had an account. They believed that the three women were involved in a scheme in which they were siphoning money out of my account and covering it up with a false statement. In addition, they were substituting counterfeit money for real money in various bank transactions. I could help them make an arrest if I participated in the police undercover operation. Wow. How exciting this is, I thought. I got swept up in the project.

What was wanted of me was my cooperation in helping them catch the criminals in action. My job was to go to my bank and withdraw a sum of money. It was very important that I not tell anyone about this and I must be careful not to touch the money as it was important to have the fingerprints of the culprit on it. The police officer would return to the bank with the counterfeit money where the teller would be confronted and arrested.

All of this had to be done immediately because the teller had been seen on a surveillance camera carrying a large envelop into the bank. I needed to get in my car and drive for 45 minutes to the branch bank and go forth with the plan. There would be undercover officers at the bank and surveillance cameras watching the entire operation. Also, the money I was taking out of the bank would not really be my money. It was a set up to catch the crook. Officer Jelenski emphasized that I must not think of it as my money. My account wouldn't be touched.

I rushed to the bank and insisted that I had to withdraw a large sum of money in cash. The banker was reluctant to allow me to do this but according to bank policy, she could not ask a customer about the reasons for a withdrawal. After I had the cash in my purse I left the bank and met the police officer who was waiting for me several blocks away from the bank. He showed me his badge and politely accepted the package. Afterwards, I got a call from the police captain asking me if I was all right and telling me they had made an arrest. He said he'd call when I got home and give me further details.

Further Details

When I arrived home I got a call from Capt. Jelenski telling me there would be a story in the newspapers the next day. Also, I would be receiving a call from the State's attorney because they wanted me to go to court and give a deposition in the case. My money was safe and my account would be the same as usual. And I ought to know, there is a reward for capturing this woman and I may be eligible to receive it.

The next morning I decided to call Capt. Jelenski and find out what else had happened in the case. When I tried to find him at the police department I was told there was no such officer. There was no one by that name in any of the departments. Then I realized, too late, that although I think I am an intelligent person impervious to scams because I am so Internet savy, I had been taken in by a con artist and scammed.

Remorse and Anger

When I reported the crime to the police I was told that this is an old con game and the police were surprised to see that it was surfacing again. I've heard of many different scams, but I had not heard of this one. My reaction when I realized the truth was an intense sense of embarrassment and shame. I also was very angry at myself for being duped in this way. How could I be so stupid as to fall for it. In reviewing what happened, it is so clear that it was a set up. But when it was happening, I got so excited by the prospect of being a good citizen and helping the police catch a criminal that I lost all my ability to think logically. I got carried away.

There was no way I was going to tell anyone about this. How could I reveal my lack of judgement to any of my friends or family? And so several days went by before I decided to tell my 17 year old grandson who is living with me this summer. He was very empathetic and told me he had been conned out of his bike one year when he stopped to help another person fix a broken bike and that person grabbed his bike and rode off with it. He vowed secrecy. It relieved me to have told one person and that opened the door for me to tell my daughter the following day. She was horrified, but she told me that it was a confidence game and he took you in his confidence. This is the most despicable form of humanity. A person who engages in that is a sociopath without any basic human feeling. Yes, he was an expert at the game.

My daughter urged me to tell other people my story. She also helped me understand that I had to stop directing the anger at myself. Rather, I need to direct it at the evil persons who perpetrated the crime. I believe I wouldn't have fallen for it if they had not had so much personal information about me, including my driver's license. I can only guess that the same people who stole my wallet probably carried out or were involved in the swindle.

Telling the Story

At first it was impossible for me to stop thinking about what had happened. I couldn't even imagine telling any of my friends because I hated for anyone to think I am so gullible. No one wants to be thought of as a victim. Falling for such a scam is difficult to accept, not only because I lost a sum of money, but because I was a participant in my own deception. Yet, as painful as it is, I am telling the story because if I didn't know about it, this must be true for other people, too.

Now I know a lot more about this particular crime. It is a scam that is very popular in areas where there are numbers of older citizens living alone. Subsequently I have found numerous articles about it on the internet. The variations are different in each case, but they all involved similar kinds of scenarios.

Bank Examiner Scheme
According to this web site, most of these scams involve telling a victim their account has been tampered with by a dishonest teller.

This scheme depends on victims remaining passive and not asserting themselves enough to ask questions and insist on clear answers.

Con artists control their victims by frightening them”saying they are losing money to a dishonest teller, and then offering them a "solution" by promising to replace the lost money. By moving quickly through this process, they can often keep their potential victims so distracted that they will be unable to think clearly enough to see just how absurd a scheme this is. Some victims have reported that they felt almost hypnotized as they became more and more involved." This describes exactly how I felt when it was happening to me.

First published on Qassia. All Rights Reserved.

This summer I have not been very busy making art. Rather than doing art, I have been entertaining guests and recovering from two not so great experiences. One of my most recent paintings is reproduced here on a mug I just designed on Zazzle. It looks very inviting to me.

Wildzinnie Mug by Julier
Make mugs with pictures On Zazzle.com

New Paintings

I have been working on a number of new paintings that started out to be about orchids, but turned into some abstract flowers and other totally abstract. My goal of creating 100 orchid paintings has not yet been met. I guess I am half way there.

Also, I have some new Zazzle products.

Courage of People with Disabilities

I go to a fitness center that is provided by the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. It is for former patients who need to continue working on strengthening and endurance as well as for anyone who is prescribed to go there for exercises therapy because of physical disabilities.

My problem is the result of the loss of strength and muscle use because of back surgery. There are many individuals who use this facility who have disabilities ranging from blindness to, amputees, to stroke victims, and others who suffer from the deterioration caused by illness such as MS and Parkinson's Disease.

I am so impressed with the way in which the people who use this facility are determined to work hard at helping themselves. Various individuals use the equipment, including weights, as a daily routine. I see them progress through the different kinds of equipment and they stick to a program prescribed for them in order to get stronger and gain better mobility. And, as time passes, many individuals really do improve. The progress is in very slow steps, but it is there and it is noticeable. I am inspired by the way everyone tries hard to achieve what may not appear to be a lot of change. It makes me try hard, too.

Mother’s Day Every year at the beginning of May I begin to worry about Mother’s Day. I am a mother and my daughters are mothers. My mother died a number of years ago, but this is the time of year when my thoughts turn to memories of her, too. I am sad that I can’t celebrate Mother’s Day honoring her and I think about my own experience being a mother. I have fond memories of taking my mom out to lunch and buying her a flower corsage each year. After I got married my husband and I took both mothers out to lunch each year. Everyone gave flowers to their mothers and the candy shops were always very busy at that time of year. I worry because I don’t want anyone to make a fuss about me on Mother’s Day, but if there isn’t any fuss, my feelings are hurt. My daughters, because they are mothers, want to be fussed about by their families, but they also have to pay attention to me and to their mothers-in-law. It just seems that it is just one big commercial event and it makes me feel like hiding somewhere. Yet, it isn’t that either. Mother’s Day has been celebrated as long as I have been around but I didn’t realize that it had such a long and extensive history. Now, because I have web sites that sell my art images on products, I have begun to think of Mother’s Day as an opportunity to sell cards. I’ve joined the commercialization band wagon, too. All of this has made me wonder about the origin of this holiday. I discovered that a celebration honoring mothers has been around since the time of ancient Greece. The holiday was celebrated in honor of Rhea, the mother of the gods. Mothering Sunday was celebrated as a religious holiday in Great Britain beginning in the 17th century on the fourth Sunday in Lent as an opportunity for working people to return to their homes in order to visit their mothers. If they could do so, they brought gifts of fruit and cakes. In the United States, Julia Ward Howe, who wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” organized a day for mothers dedicated to peace as a response to the sadness and grief suffered by mothers during the Civil War. Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation of 1870 “Julia Ward Howe...called for an international Mother's Day celebrating peace and motherhood with the following poem: Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage, For caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. "We women of one country Will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs." From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with Our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!" The sword of murder is not the balance of justice! Blood does not wipe out dishonor Nor violence indicate possession. As men have of ten forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war. Let women now leave all that may be left of home For a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means Whereby the great human family can live in peace, Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, But of God. In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask That a general congress of women without limit of nationality May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient And at the earliest period consistent with its objects To promote the alliance of the different nationalities, The amicable settlement of international questions. The great and general interests of peace.“ Anna Reeves Jarvis organized a West Virginia woman’s group who began to celebrate an adaptation of Howe’s holiday and called it Mother’s Friendship Day. After Anna Reeves Jarvis died, her daughter Anna M. Jarvis campaigned for the creation of an official Mother’s Day. In 1908, young Anna was responsible for a movement that honored her mother, and on May 10, 1908, the first official Mother's Day celebration took place at Andrew's Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia and a church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. “Two carnations were given to every Mother in attendance.“ Andrew's Methodist Church is the site of the International Mother’s Day Shrine in that was dedicated 1962. According to www.mothersdaycentral.com/ “the United States congress approved Mother’s Day in 1914, they designated it for the second Sunday in May, and required that the President proclaim the Holiday every year shortly prior to its commencement.“ With this history as a background it now becomes clear where the impetus for this annual celebration comes from. It isn’t a creation of the candy and restaurant industry, although it is known to be one of the busiest restaurant days during the year. It isn’t necessary to cite statistics on this subject because it is evident that florists probably see their highest volume of sales at this time and the candy and gift industry is also operating at peak volume during May. I am certain that sales of Mother’s Day cards and gifts are also very brisk. All of these commercial activities centered around Mother’s Day help the economy and at the same time everyone gets an opportunity to express love and appreciation in honor of all mothers, everywhere. I think it is time to stop worrying about it and just enjoy it. First published on Qassia

Florida Flowers

I’ve just returned from a visit to Florida. This was a needed vacation from Chicago’s awful weather. I also needed to see some flowers, green plants and, best of all, the ocean. I managed to work on only one drawing while I was there but that is better than nothing.

My usual strategy is to photograph lots of green stuff, leaves and pods in order to take the images home with me for further study. I don’t draw from nature but I use nature to reflect upon the structure and many possible combinations available in nature. The impressionists went into the field to study nature directly. I have never taken my paints and paper out side to work on site, but I do use the photographs together and in combination to create the compositions that become my flower drawings and paintings.

A Visit to Winslow Homer’s Watercolors

Yesterday I had a chance to visit the Art Institute of Chicago and see the exhibit “Watercolors by Winslow Homer: The Color of Light—which was organized by the Art Institute and will be shown exclusively in Chicago. It is the largest exhibition of Homer’s watercolors to be presented in more than two decades. It features 25 rarely exhibited Homer watercolors from the Art Institute’s collection, set in the context of watercolors, drawings, prints, and oil paintings on loan from other museums and private collections. A total of 130 works tells the story of Winslow Homer’s development as an artist.”

It was not high on my list of exhibits that I needed to see, but since it was available I took advantage of the opportunity to learn something about an artist whom I had not previously studied. The exhibit turned out to be an exhilarating experience. The technical exploration that Winslow Homer used told a story of inventiveness and use of art materials that was enormously satisfying to examine up close. The paintings are hung in a very intimate way so that it is possible to get very close to each one in order to see exactly how he achieved interesting effects by experimenting with different glazes, paint viscosity, color relationships, and the use of opaque and transparent paint, especially white.

I was especially interested in the very early paintings because they were very experimental in nature. By the time Homer was working in his mature water color style he was so adept at the various techniques that the sense of technical discovery within the art was no longer important. The paintings are extraordinarily beautiful. They manage to capture a sense of the moment because of his use of transparent and opaque watercolor paint. Each painting has a vibrancy and brilliance that make them sparkle even though they are displayed in very dim light in order to prevent fading that is a particular problem with watercolor paint. This ease and naturalness defines the watercolor medium perfectly.

After seeing the exhibit I was inspired to go home to my studio and take another look at some of the watercolor paintings I had been working on. Seeing Homer’s paintings directly resulted in my adding more contrast to my own paintings, especially highlights of white. 

Winslow Homer began his career as an illustrator and became very adept at creating wood engravings and lithographs. His work as an illustrator during the Civil War stimulated him to be very inventive and creative in describing what he saw and transcribing his line drawings into prints. This printmaking experience was the background for his interest in working from dark to light and from light to dark. In lithography, a print maker has to scratch away the lithographic grease crayon in order to allow white to appear in the print. The lithographic system works because the grease drawn area will hold ink and the white area of the stone will not, so when the print is pulled, that area which has been either left white or has been scratched through to be white will print with white because it won't hold the ink. I recognized this way of thinking in his early watercolor paintings because of added white lines and areas created by using opaque white paint or scratching through the darker paint with a knife to reveal the watercolor paper. 

Winslow Homer's added gum Arabic and other materials to increase the viscosity of some of his pigments in order to give them the body of oil paint. Scratching away of painted areas also was a technique I had not noticed previously. This exhibition allowed for very close inspection of the paintings. In addition, the Art Institute had an entire section of the exhibit devoted to the technical aspects of Homer's work. Art Institute of Chicago's  Behind the Scenes  has an interesting page devoted to this particular aspect of his art. 

Making art is like a movie to me

Whenever I am in the middle of a painting I feel as though I am creating a movie in one dimension. The characters are abstract shapes on the canvas and where they land is the drama. This is one way of thinking about abstraction that gives it life and animation in my imagination.

I started writing this exactly one year ago. Since then I have had a lot of time to work and think about art and the following is the continuation of this idea including the painting that was finished in February of 2008.
Anthropomorphizing shapes is not uncommon. Lots of people look at ink blots in psychology testing and give these ships attributes that are not contained within the randomness of the ink blot technique. The same goes for abstract shapes that spontaneously occur in my paintings. The dimensions and anatomy of the shapes aren't preplanned. They come about because of what has happened before in the painting. I may draw them in and then paint around them, or I may start painting and they appear.

In this painting, that is a cross between the flower paintings I had been making and the interest I have in continuing to work in an abstract manner. It has some of the qualities of the flowers and a weird container popped up out of my brain that is holding the flowers. It appears that the container is about to close. I did not think about that until I looked at it now, but apparently, I am trying to end the flowers if I can.

My First Art Commission

A number of years ago I was asked if I would paint a particular kind of
painting on commission. The purchaser was a well known architect and I was
very flattered to be asked to create a work of art for his home. We had
several conversations about what was required and we came to an
understanding about the price and the specifications of the painting.
He had recently purchased a one of a kind rug that he planned to use as
a wall hanging. What he wanted me to do was to design a large painting that
would hang on the opposite wall from the rug. The painting should have a
similar or complementary color scheme and be in the style he knew I was
working in at the time. Also, the size needed to be a very specific size,
six feet square.

I immediately began to draw a number of small sketches that would give
him an idea of the way I was thinking about this project. We agreed
verbally that I should go ahead and create the painting. Well I was full
speed ahead on this project and began the work of building the stretchers,
and laying out the new canvas. The actual painting took a number of weeks
and it was very stimulating to be working on this project.

This was my first experience with having art commissioned. I was very
naive and ignorant of the way business works so I agreed to the project on
the basis of trust and a handshake. I now know that is not enough. I had
not asked for a down payment when I began the project because it didn't
even occur to me to do so.

When the painting was finished I called my client and he and his wife
came to my studio to see the painting. And there's where the first mistake
showed up. His wife was not involved in the purchase and when she saw the
painting, she didn't like it. She liked my work, but she didn't like the
painting. I believe she was angry at him because he hadn't included her in
the decision making. She had the veto power, and unfortunately, I was the
one it was aimed at.

When it turned out that the painting was rejected, I immediately offered
to sell them another painting from my studio at the same price. They agreed
so all was not lost. The only problem was that I was now in possession of a
painting that was so specific that it would be hard to sell it to someone
else.

Several years later I sold the painting to another collector but the
experience I gained from my first commision taught me a lot. I now know
that I need a written contract and a down payment on the price agreed upon
as well as a schedule of payment as the work progresses. I also know that
all parties involved in the purchase need to be on board.

All Rights Reserved.
First published on Qassia.