Another Image Thief: Beeliciouss

One of the forum members posted this site today and I just about fell over from all the images this person had ripped off from all my fellow bead artists.

Beeliciouss posts on (her?) site that she just came back from the US and while there, she met an artist that created all these fabulous creations which she wants to help sell. Problem is all the crafts she's trying to sell on the site for her "artist friend" are actually all crafts from various bead artists (that I know) and not just one person. Plus one of the images is actually mine and I sure as hell didn't give her permission to sell my work.

Actually if a person really paid attention to the images and the payment options on the site, they could see the whole thing is a scam. The images don't match up in some cases, for example, the Owl brooches/pendants - she shows you a picture of a hair accessory but offers to sell you a pendant. The payment options don't include anything that would allow you to secure your purchases like a creditcard or Paypal would, so basically she can take your money and run once the transaction is complete. Personally I don't buy anything online anymore unless I can purchase it with Paypal and even then I do my homework before I buy.

I really hate when people do this. It's one thing to rip off someone's idea and sell it as your own because then you are at least doing the work for the money, but this woman probably just googled a bunch of bead art and posted up on a site in hopes she could con a bunch of people into sending her money in exchange for nothing. Though honestly, if any one is dumb enough to buy anything off an unsecure site at almost triple what they are worth, then maybe they deserve to get ripped off.

UPDATE: So Beeliciouss has blocked me from her page and made it accessible only to certain logins, so you will have to check out this link instead - http://beeliciouss.livejournal.com/ another site full of other people's items she's offering to swap or sell items but again she's using pictures from other people's sites. If you scroll down the page, you'll see another bead art group of items where you can see a picture with a watermark that she's tried to erase as much as possible without erasing the actual products in the picture. You can still see though the www.mi .... a.livejournal.com which obviously isn't her blog address.

She's really clever doing the whole item swap thing on the one site because people are even more likely to trust item swaps and she'll end up with a whole bunch of free stuff, but again if you pay attention to the requirements of her swap - she wants specific items in exchange for her items. In the end, she gets something she really wants and you will get nothing.