Ok this was that strange I had to tell someone.

At about 8:30 tonight I hear a knock at the door. I opened the door to find a funning looking 25ish looking hippy French guy standing there with a huge wallet type folder. Before I opened the screen door I asked him who he was and what he wanted but he didn’t understand me. He then started his story and from what i could gather from his bad English he was a French Art student who has travelled to Australia for the experience of talking to us about his oil painting. Again I asked what he wanted from me. He said he wanted feedback about his art work and he opened up his big folder and showed me this nice painting of the Moulin Rouge. It was c00l as art goes but i don’t give a f*** about art I like cars! Which is then what I tried to explain to him. I tried to interrogate this French guy to sus out if he was for real or casing out my house to steal s***. He didn’t understand a thing I said but he did tell me he was staying in west end near a backpackers sleeping on the street.

He started showing me more painting of gardens, rivers, Greek buildings and abstract stuff which I gave his some “feed back on” we got to his last painting and i was trying to get this guy off my veranda then he asks me will i take the Moulin rouge painting. I said no thanks. He asked again saying in France he sells them for $1000 and he uses the money to pay for school, but he would sell the painting for $250 to me. I said no thanks and he stood there looking puzzled.

I tried to explain i was a young guy who has just moved out of home and i have no money for art because i have bills and a roof over my head to pay for. He didn’t understand i said no thanks cya latter and closed the door.

This happend in Murarrie.

Is this something Thief’s do to case out a home? Has anyone else had this French guy knock on their door? So strange!

lol wat?

maybe that's how they roll in france?

Perhaps the painting isn't worth $250 (let alone a $1000) and it's a typical scam.

If your acting skills were good enough, I could see it working.

Buy a bunch of s***ty reproduction paintings @ $20 a pop, sell them to people for a bargain price of $250.

I had (probably) the same guy in December.. Antione?


it was the silly season so we bought one of his works as a pressie for mum and invited him back for beers.


the guy seemed pretty decent, and it was interesting talking to a young French dude about Euro and African politics (and F/Legion involvement) instead of reading the s*** thats on the net for a change.


he's here until his Visa runs out in October yeah?

last edited by koopz at 21:53:45 24/May/09

Interesting - my mum has a French GIRL at her place doing the same thing, and my mum actually bought a painting which looks good and genuine. Now I'm wondering if the whole thing was actually a scam?

He was trying to explain to me the techniques and some of the meanings his paintings portrayed. If his English was better he would have almost had me fooled. He asked me what i saw in one of his abstract square paintings and I said I could see a house... home. That made him all excited because he said that’s what the painting represented.

Impressive...
The french guy didn't surrender at the first opportunity

look on the up side Billy, France is becoming over run by muslims



:/

wow koopz. it could be

This guy said his name was Vincent. I didn’t ask him how long he was here for but he was a nice guy. I didn’t feel like he was trying to scam me until the end when he was trying to off load a painting on me. He was a skinny guy with a small afro hair style with a little stubble goatee.

Same as koopz, but the painting was like $30 or something and was decent quality/size so made a good present. Like buying one of those posters from k-mart.

There are thieves who do this though, one ditracts you while more go round the back & steal your stuff.

Have you heard of Paragraphs ?

If you want to be a Smart Arse FaceMan go stick a dictionary up your arse!

I own a white van. Want to buy a top of the line set of speakers for a fraction of their retail cost? They are "left over" from the "job" we just did ....

maybe the frenchman stole his paragraphs while he wasn't looking?


Conspiracy? or not?


Faceman will decide

So many ppl CyberBullying me.
Its like a Self Fulfilling Conspiracy.

If you want to be a Smart Arse FaceMan go stick a dictionary up your arse!

Lol, but if you want people to take your post seriously, use some grammar and paragraphs. I hate reading posts that are just a huge wad of text.

faceman is persay v2.0

o wai

had a very similar dude come to me 6-8months ago in hendra.
had some wicked paintings.

f*** its a small post not a f***ing news paper. I fixed my post!

last edited by AvaLon at 22:40:23 24/May/09

Interesting - my mum had a French GIRL at her place doing the same thing, and my mum actually bought a painting which looks good and genuine

x2

Sounds like a scam to me.

If he knocked on my door I'd kick his scamming frog arse to the curb.

was he tryng to sell you suits as well?

+1 scam

Heh I remember a french dude coming around to some place where I was (can't remember if it's where I'm living now or not) and he was trying to sell paintings too. Weird!

this is bizarre. ages ago (august-september last year) i was drinking at fridays after closing at siana and this french dude, absolute wanker, butts in, tries hitting on one of my work mates and tries to get me to buy a painting. awful english. we barely let him get started before telling him we weren't interested, but he kept talking.
weird, can't believe so many other people on here have had similar experiences.
it must be a conspiracy.

haha yeah it's a scam, basically the same as the white vans. they buy cheap mass produced paintings and flog them off to you at whatever price they can.

you've been scammed. They've been doing it for a number of years.

http://honestconman.blogspot.com/2008/06/french-swindlers.html

HOLY CRAP, SHE CAME TO OUR PLACE LAST NIGHT TOO! Probably around the same time.

Where are you? We are in Camp Hill. I didn't see her, but I could hear her talking to my sister before my Dad charged in over the top and told her to leave.

yeah i dunno why i've heard of this before but i recognise it as a known scam

I don't know if you can call it a scam, they show you the painting first. If it's really worth $250 to you, then that is your choice... If you buy it out of pity for their story well then your whole life probably feels like a scam.

how much did you pay for yours thermite?

was the painting worth $250 to you ?

€1 = $2.. go back to france and earn some euro.

Not quiet anymore... it's only around 1.78 or so

This happened to my room mate's mum. She lives in Toowong and it was a french girl. No sale though.

Far out this has happened a lot. I think Stinky's link confirms that this whole French art student thing is more than likely a scam!

You should hook up with a french girl, I heard they like le-cock.

haha, scams are awesome! what is that other one that was around for ages where dudes were selling audio s*** out the back of white vans or something?

http://www.google.com.au/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=french+art+student+scam&meta=cr%3DcountryAU&btnG=Google+Search

http://stirling.inmycommunity.com.au/news-and-views/local-news/Worthless-art-a-scam/7515350/

last edited by Le Cock at 09:23:28 25/May/09

rofl, "bruno" visited my house maybe 2-3 months ago with his wallet of paintings. Felt it was pretty fishy but he wouldn't leave until he had sprawled all his paintings over the ground using his poor english as an excuse for ignoring my requests to leave. Fun times.

haha yeah i am in camp hill and i had some frenh dude knock on the door and started telling me some bs about paintings etc. i had heard of the scam before so i told him "NOT INTERESTED!" and closed the door in his face. this was around ~6months ago or so

I don't know if you can call it a scam, they show you the painting first. If it's really worth $250 to you, then that is your choice...

It's as much as a scam as the white van speaker / suit guys. People who get tricked by them think they are buying decent quality stuff. People who buy these paintings think they are buying authentic paintings. How are they any different?

I tried to interrogate this French guy to sus out if he was for real or casing out my house to steal s***.

Did you try waterboarding?

If one of them comes back ill be sure to try waterboarding..!

id be more concerned about the 6 guys carrying all your gear out the back door while you're on the porch trying to speak french to a travelling painting salesman

hahahaha

I tried to explain i was a young guy who has just moved out of home

you're f***en like 30 and been living at home your entire life making s*** loads of cash in your IT job, give him $250 you tight c***!

ps: if you're not the av, then sorry.

last edited by casa at 12:29:10 25/May/09

I once bought a screen printed picture of this weird punk (lots of piercing, patch jacket etc) looking guy out the front of Subway/Night Owl in Greenslopes. Framed it and gave it to my sister for Christmas. Only cost me like $50 including the frame.

This is so funny. There was a time when I would have paid like $500 for a framed print of a Stargate movie poster, and I even offered to buy it from someone, but they refused to sell it.
In the meantime people are coming up with all kinds of bulls*** painting scams, when they could just sell people something they actually want and probably at the same cost.

i was pretty amazed when i passed this story around the office this morning n 4 guys from my section had been approached at thier homes by similar scammers in the last few weeks. none of them bought anything tho coz they are engineers who kinda have a different view of what is art ;p

(edit) also one of em pointed me at this door to door fair trading website which was interesting to know.

kinda unrelated... but i bought a copy of a ink drawing of wolverine signed by the original artist years ago from the daily planet comic shop for $10. at the time the guy seemed to be having a pretty hard time selling them n i just bought one coz i thought they looked cool... wasn't even that worried about the signiture. got it framed n on the wall in my loungeroom n 5 diff people have offered me upto $200 for it :P

last edited by demon at 14:11:48 25/May/09

poor English or not, no one is going to confuse a boot to the head as hospitality
gtfo my balcony you surrendering pussy!@

f*** me the french guy is next door...... what should i do!!

Call the cops, or just bash them, your choice.

f*** me the french guy is next door...... what should i do!!

1. Prepare a table at a slight incline.
2. Prepare restraints and large bucket of water.
3. ....
4. Profit.

^lol

We tried to call the neighbours but could not find their home number. So I went outside and interrupted them. I said “This French guy could not be trusted and the paintings he was showing you are china copies. “
The whole time the French guy just looked at me and then said he didn’t understand. My neighbours thanked me for the heads up. They are pensioners.
They continued to talk to him but they didn’t buy anything. Then he left.

TELL ME! WHERE ARE THE CANVASES!?

http://images.projectstripe.com/jack_bauer_versus_french_student.jpg

last edited by nF at 19:39:57 25/May/09

Watch your neighbor get scammed hehehe

Sounds like something that shoulda happened to you in Wynnum Glenny haha....

Who you living with ?

Just read this thread and here's an FYI:

I once replied to an ad many, many years go in the paper (early 90's) which asked for people interested in art. With stars in my eyes I applied. At the time I was naive enough to think that I could end up getting them to sell my own work.

Was a bunch of us, mostly young an clueless (and yes, several backpackers). We were given a folio of prints and dropped off somewhere around greensopes and directed to knock on doors and told to turn back up at such an such a time.

One of the most eye opening days of my life. Never went back after the first day.

I was filling up at the shell near the hospital in Windsor, and the speaker van guys approached me. it was pretty weird standing there with the pump in hand, and them trying to scam me. (already have some OK hi-fi stuff at home anyway)

Yep; had two guys come twice to our place, the first one at around 5pm and the other around 7pm the next day (err...)

My grandmother has also had one come at around 10pm, seriously wtf. Dirty Frenchies.

So many ppl CyberBullying me. Its like a Self Fulfilling Conspiracy.

You sure it isn't the fact that your an idiot?

612 ABC might be picking up this story, nice work Glenny.

cause $1000 is such an expensive painting you'd be expecting great quality, let alone the $250 basement price and the fact they're door knocking for it ~

good times - so are they prints or paintings anyway?

good times - so are they prints or paintings anyway?

From what I understand a mix of the two. Prints done with human xerox's :)

I went to the 'art exhibition' at the convention centre about 6 months ago and it was nothing but chinese prints and they were going for $250-$800 and there were s***loads of people lined up to buy. Crazy.

Yeh art is one of those strange things where I'm sure people will always pay large amounts of money for "crap".

My neighbour holds art exhibitions every year or so where he goes to Griffith art school (I think) and hand picks two students who he really likes. He then decks out a few rooms of his house with their paintings, drawings and whatever, and invites all his friends over to have wine and cheese and look at the art. The students obviously don't charge much for the paintings, but usually make quite a bit of money just from the sheer volume of people who see their work. Winners all 'round.

Got worked inline swiss army bubbler?

http://www.tokecity.com/forums/attachment.php4?attachmentid=63003&stc=1&d=1209110349

Now that s*** is art.

/random post

Same guy was at mine a month ago. My s*** is still here