Case 4: @katrinart is Impersonating Artist Ekaterina Putyatina

Accusation:

None!

The account @katrinart caught my eye all by itself.

The Findings:

You might remember my 1st case. This is in essence the same story with a slightly better disguise.

@iconzbranding had obviously doctored a steem logo into a stolen photo, claimed to be the creator of work produced by two separate artists, and posted some rather disturbing content in between, not much to dispute here.

This time, we go from Nigeria to Ukraine, to find another incredibly talented artist going by the handle @katrinart.

The account looks genuine at first glance, of course the art has been posted elsewhere, you'll find it on instagram, facebook, deviantart, and especially vk (aka the russian facebook).

The easy discovery here is the real name of our artist, it's "Ekaterina Putyatina".

Ekaterina uses the same profile image as the account here on steemit.com, the artwork is all identical and the account over here does exclusively post her work. All in all it looked genuine at first.

But @katrinart's introduction post stands out! It opens with the picture of a blond girl holding the usual paper-of-proof in her hands. Right in her very first post on the platform.

That account owner obviously immediatly knew what they were doing here and the "real" Ekaterina seems rather shy about showing her own face on the web.

Long story short: I couldn't find conclusive evidence on the blockchain, so I contacted the real Ekaterina in several of her profiles asking her if she was aware of her presence on steemit.com.

She responded pretty quickly on deviantart. Here's what she had to say:

thank you very much for the information! it's not me! The person impersonates me. It will be necessary to understand this. thanks again

We can't say for sure whether @katrinart is just trying to get rewards with stolen work, or if they are actually also trying to scam commissions. Some of their posts clearly talk about "order work". But either way, steemit.com doesn't need this.

The Schocking Truth

Our perpetrator has again received a nice $100 bonus from @curie. Unlike in @iconzbranding's case, though, these rewards are already processed. Nothing we can change about it now.

I think it's time the guy's at @curie did some homework before giving their praises.

yours,
Sherlock

P.S.: On a sidetrack I found the source of Ekaterina's profile picture, too. It's not by herself, it's widely used on the web and was originally made by an Italian photographer called Samantha Meglioli.

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Have you witnessed similar things yourself?

Don't just ignore it and move on... let me know!

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