07/27/2026
IDENTIFYING SCAM ACCOUNTS
We’ve had another account posting on community pages offering free tattoos, and then asking for money that claim that they work at Hidden Leaf Tattoo. Unfortunately tattoo scams seem to be a common occurrence. So I just wanted to make a post on how to identify and avoid these kinds of potential scams to hopefully protect someone from giving one of these accounts money!
-The accounts will post on a community page that they’re offering a “free” tattoo and then ask for money, or comment on a post from a client looking for an artist who has a public post that they can see (they’ll even go to personal pages for this) with identifiable words like “tattoo”.
-They will give you an address of a shop (sometime changing depending on who messages them), and not be listed as an artist who works there. They usually never have a shop listed on their fb bio or in their work section on their pages, and the ones that I’ve encountered that do on Instagram specifically, have a copy paste of the business bio with none of the artist actually linked (so you won’t be able to click on them from the bio). Sometimes they even go the extra mile and block the artist and shop page from seeing their accounts.
-They usually ask for a money in a nonrefundable form of payment on a free service like Zelle, and most commonly Chime and will pressure you to set up an account and sending money. Some artist do use these form of payments to collect deposits, however no one should be pressuring you or asking you for money on something that is free for any reason.
-They will solicit you and send links to enter raffles. Do not click the links. If an artist is running a raffle, information can usually be found on their page with listed details on how to enter and does not involve soliciting potential clients.
-Usually the account profile picture is relatively new and only a few days old in relation to the community post. Sometimes the accounts have been created within the last month or so with very little activity or a burst of recent activity leading up to the community post to showcase work.
- You can reverse image search their “work” on Google Images and find other artist accounts online that they’ve stolen the exact image from.
-A lot of tattoo artist use IG (but not all) as our portfolio as well to showcase our work, and I’ve notice I’ve never found an IG account connected to the Facebook spam accounts.
IF YOU’RE QUESTIONING IT:
-It’s better safe than sorry, so please feel free to reach out to a shop and ask about the account/“artist” in question. We like to know if things like this are happening to report the accounts and notify people of potential scams going on.
-If something is listed as free, never send someone money.
-Ask for an in person consultation with the artist at the shop to talk about your tattoo with the artist.
-Cross reference the artist work. Look on the official shop page, IG, and website to see if the artist is listed.
POSTING LOOKING FOR AN ARTIST:
If you’re looking for an artist in a community page, or online, post a reference of what you’re looking to get done.
Avoid certain words that can easily be found by bots like “tattoo”. Try posting something like “I’m looking for something like this” instead.
Go into the “Edit Photo” (the little pencil icon) → “Settings” → “Write Alt Text” and make sure there is no auto generated text that would indicate that your image is a tattoo, or leave this section blank.
Still verify that the accounts responding are real.
Never send money if you are unsure. It’s sad that there are so many of these accounts that we have to be weary of these kinds of scams. They are constantly evolving and becoming more believable. Please take caution to protect yourself against them. ❤️
