Hello,

My name is Leonid Afremov. I would like to inform you about scam and fraud on the internet revolving my art. I’m a successful artist exclusively working via the internet. I sell on www.afremov.com , ebay and a couple other sites.  On some sites the images of my paintings are protected from download and in some sites anyone can download the image of the painting.  I don’t like using watermarks since it decreases the sales.

 Different crooks download the images of my paintings or simply use the print screen option to capture an image of the painting. Then they make copies of the paintings and sell them but use the image of the paintings that I took and they downloaded from www.afremov.com.  When they list my copyrighted images on ebay, it takes one simple email to have the listings removed. I sued a few guys that illegally reproduced my art and used my images of paintings in a couple countries. But I cannot do anything about the sites from China. Here is an example of such site that uses my images and commits scam and fraud against me and their clients. http://www.dafenoilpaintings.com/palette-knife-painting-2011-c-66.html there you can see them calling it a palette knife painting and using my images they got on deviantart.com for example. This is a ridiculous scam that needs to be stopped.

I don’t know how to stop this phenomenon. When people buy from them, they frequently think they are buying from me and then accuse me of being scam and fraud and then write complaints online like it was my fault . Frequently, these crooks would even fake my signature. On one hand I should be happy because I have reached such a level of successes that my art is being mimicked and copied so much, but on the other hand I feel scammed and this Chinese scam affects my business. I feel this scam and fraud the Chinese are pulling off can cost me my reputation.

I even went to the embassy of china and they told me that they are not responsible for what their traders doing. They said that they only take action, if I ordered merchandise in China and never received it.  Now I know that the whole industry of fakes and counterfeits in China is backed by the government.  It feels like its global scam because everything around is made in China….hahaha even art by Leonid Afremov

In order to keep my fans and clients informed and not become victims of Chinese scam and fraud, I provided here bellow a list of sites where I sell my art, and list of sites of authorized giclee/print retailers

www.afremov.com

www.ebay.com – user “afremov” is mine , the rest are authorized giclee retailers

www.Bidz.com – authorized giclee and original retailer

www.qart.com - authorized giclee and original retailer

www.mercadolibre.com – user “afremovgallery” is mine

There are a few other sites like ioffer.com where I list listings for special commissions only.

If you see any site where you see my images of my paintings displayed in items for sale, please let me know ASAP my email is vitebskart@yahoo.com . Hopefully I can fight this phenomenon of scam and fraud against art of Leonid Afremov.

Truly Yours ,

Leonid Afremov