LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Fleur De Flea, a vintage flea market in Louisville, is sounding the alarm about online scammers who’ve targeted their upcoming outdoor market, and other businesses in town.
“They took a picture from a previous post of ours,” Dave Porter, a co-owner of Fleur De Flea, told Spectrum News. “Hosted by Vintage & Food Truck Chambers. That’s a fake event. This is a scam.”
According to Porter, scam artists created a fake Facebook event page that’s nearly identical to the one the Fleur De Flea has for its Labor Day weekend event at Waterfront Park.
The fake listing was created by Vintage & Food Truck Chambers, a page with no posts except for future outdoor events. The page was created in June.
Porter says hopeful vendors have been fooled by this scam, and ended up paying the wrong people. Thousands of others online have marked they are ‘interested’ in attending the nonexistent event scheduled for early September.
“We don’t want to see that happen to anybody,” Porter said. “We don’t want to see somebody plan a trip to Louisville only to show up downtown and they’re not there.”
On the fake event page, it lists an out-of-state phone number to text if you want to be a vendor. Within just a few minutes of contacting that number, Spectrum News was given a quote of either $150 or $250 to rent space at the vintage market. The person texting back then provided a CashApp username to send the money to.
Porter says Fleur De Flea never asks for payment up front, and curates who is chosen as a vendor.
Heather Clary, a spokesperson for the Better Business Bureau, says people should watch out for events that are only posted on social media, or make you pay with services like CashApp or Zelle instead of a credit card.
“If something doesn’t feel right, ask questions. Do some other checking. If a business or organization kind of ghosts you or doesn’t want to answer these questions or speak with you or be upfront with you, that could be a big red flag and you want to move on elsewhere,” Clary said.
Clary adds other things to look out for are misspellings or grammatical errors and pages that have been recently created. She recommends you report pages you suspect are fraudulent to the BBB Scam Tracker.
Porter says they’ve already reported the fake event to both Facebook and the police. He warns others to be vigilant and think twice before sending anyone money.
“We’ve done our due diligence and we want to encourage people—If you see this fake event post up on your Facebook page, report it,” He said. “Just constantly report it.”
Owners of Fleur De Flea say the only event they have scheduled at this time is their outdoor market Labor Day weekend. They warn the same people who’ve targeted their business are also spoofing events hosted by other Louisville companies.