Artists Beware of Scam: Sperimarket Online Gallery

By J. Taylor Basker

SELF-PORTRAIT BY BRUDER, Digital Art, 2025.

The life of an artist is difficult enough; now predators take new advantages of artists who struggle to sell their artwork. Today many artists produce digital art, hoping to improve their chances to sell online, and to explore the creative possibilities of technology and design software. Digital art online is classified as NFTs, non-fungible tokens, digital assets that include art, music, film, poetry or books. This has led to many digital art scams, some operating close by. These scams include phishing (tricking people into sharing private information, downloading malware), bidding and payment scams, as well as fake NFTs and artwork theft.

Bruder, a colleague of mine in the Philippines and an emerging digital artist, was recently scammed of $10,000 and his digital artwork. These crooks operate out of Brooklyn just over the bridge, in a WeWork space at 195 Montague Street only three miles away. However, the WeWork managers never heard of them when I contacted them. Bruder was enticed by an alleged art buyer on FaceBook, World of Artworks, who convinced him to register with Sperimarket.com through its email address. Upon registration he was instructed to open an e-wallet on their website and deposit $10,000 by the account manager, Desmond Dieter, on a WhatsApp call. This was to cover registration, advertising fees, and other charges for posting digital art prints, including certificates of authenticity, which he never received.