Beautiful parka for sale on Facebook? It may be a scam

Adam Terpstra thought he was buying a beautiful, handmade parka from an artisan in Yellowknife. He was actually being scammed out of hundreds of dollars.

The psychotherapist practising in Dawson City, Yukon is now warning others of a Facebook scam he fell victim to in late December of last year.

Adam Terpstra told the Yukon News he lost more than $600 when trying to buy a coat from what he believed to be a home business operating in Yellowknife. In reality, he was being defrauded.

“There is a degree of shame around making a mistake, and so that’s just like, the part of that sucks. It’s just like, who likes feeling shame when they make a mistake?” he said.

Terpstra said he saw a Facebook business, claiming to be run by an Inuk woman, advertising fur clothes on a Yukon Facebook page. After mulling it over for a week, he decided to make a purchase.

The vendor told him they would have to ship it out of Yellowknife and, after confirming a price, asked Terpstra to e-transfer the payment to an email address that differed from the posted email on the business’s Facebook account.

When Terpstra asked about the discrepancy, the vendor told him the email he should e-transfer to belonged to her husband.

“For me, again, originally being from small town in Ontario, spending a lot of time up in the Yukon, up in Dawson … the idea that people are selling stuff through Facebook isn’t unexpected, and it not following customary business avenues of going into a business account? Not really surprising for me,” said Terpstra. “And so I ended up sending the money.”

The person immediately began hounding Terpstra for confirmation that the e-transfer went through, which confused Terpstra, who thought that the vendor would receive notification of the e-transfer themselves. Then, Terpstra said the vendor began to ask him for his measurements for the supposed coat.

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When it came time for the supposed item to ship, Terpstra said the vendor told him he could pick it up from the airport or pay extra to have the airport deliver it to his door – which is common for items being shipped to Dawson, he said. He declined, and was told the courier business would be in contact shortly.

He did get an email from a courier business shortly after – requesting $300 for “shipping insurance” be e-transferred upfront as a mandatory part of the delivery.

Terpstra said the whole transaction did not feel right. He contacted the business on Facebook asking it to cancel the order. He said the vendor became “despondent” to the point where he called them over Facebook – and a man picked up.

The man told Terpstra his “wife” was not home, despite Terpstra supposedly messaging with her over Facebook just moments prior to calling. Terpstra realized it was “a complete scam.”

Terpstra told the man he wanted his money back and sent an e-transfer request that, he said, was never fulfilled. Shortly afterward, he was blocked by the business and another Facebook account bearing the same name. The Yukon News was able to verify there are two Facebook accounts by that name still active on Facebook.

The Yukon News reached out to both accounts, and was promptly blocked by one. The second account told the Yukon News they receive “so many queries from people that I scammed them,” then stopped responding when asked why they posted a photo of a parka for sale in December 2024 that exactly matched a photo of a parka uploaded by another Facebook user in October 2024.

‘There’s a lot at stake here’

The Yukon News also spoke with Taalrumiq, an Inuvialuk and Gwich’in fashion designer and artist based in Tsimshian territory in northern BC.

She said photos of some of her designs have been poached and then posted for sale by scammers pretending to be Inuit designers on Facebook.

“One garment can take weeks, sometimes months, to create, and I put a lot of hard work into that. So not only my own skills and technical knowledge, but I’m also drawing upon the skills that I inherited from my mother, my grandmother, my ancestors. So there’s a lot at stake here,” she said.

“It is a process and a labour of love and to see someone just take my picture, to try to pass it off as their own in order to scam customers, is heartbreaking.”

Taalrumiq said scam pages ripping off designs from Inuit artists and designers is a growing issue.

“There’s some really high-profile Inuit designers who have been dealing with this for years, and I’m seeing it more now. Especially with the increased use of social media, many more Inuit are starting online businesses and making their sales that way,” she said.

“So it is easier to find a variety of images of our clothing and goods – and with social media, you can just click and download an image.”

Taalrumiq said a great deal of labour goes into making these pieces of clothing. She said they’re valuable, as is recognized by everyone from scammers to high-end fashion houses.

“Look at Valentino, they outright copied some Dene, Métis beadwork,” she said, referring to a fashion house that was subject to criticism from Indigenous actor Lily Gladstone late last year.

“We know there’s value in the work we’re doing, and it is creative, and it is unique, because everybody wants to copy it and get their piece of the pie, so to speak.”

Taalrumiq warned Indigenous artists who wish to post their creations online to be careful about making sure their designs aren’t used by scammers. She said creators should have their account names overlaid on top of the photos they post, or to use a watermark to prevent someone from simply using their photos.

As for people interested in purchasing authentic Inuit clothes, Taalrumiq said they should review accounts with a critical eye.

“Look for signs like the styles of the clothing, if there’s clothing from all areas of the circumpolar north – say, Inuvialuit style and then Nunavut and then even as far as the Nunatsiavut. That’s probably not made by just one designer, because a lot of us don’t do that. We kind-of stick to the clothing styles of our Inuit region, like specific to where we’re from,” she said.

If the photo backgrounds are inconsistent, she said, that’s another giveaway a page may be a scam.

She also recommends using a verified registry when looking for Indigenous artists who sell their work. She gave the example of the territory-run website for the Northwest Territories, NWT Arts.

She also encouraged interested customers to message with the people they’re looking to purchase from to find out more about their community and background.

“When I’m asked these things, I’m able to give who I am, where I’m from, my family information, and then, you know, establish community connections with other Inuit,” she said.

Scams ‘dishearten’ designers

Danielle Rock is another designer whose creations were ripped off by the same account that scammed Terpstra.

She posted a photo of a beautiful purple parka in September 2024. The scam page posted the same photo in January 2025, advertising that parka for sale.

Rock, who is Iñupiaq, lives in northern Alaska and sometimes posts photos of clothing she’s made for sale on her Facebook business account, Coastal Rock Design. She said some scammers have gone as far as creating accounts that are identical to her own, then impersonating her while scamming people.

She said most of the scams started within the past six to eight months.

“It’s really disheartening, puts a damper on everything just because, like, do I share my work on the internet? Or do I, like, create just a website where that’s the only place I’m gonna sell things?” she said.

She said she has started watermarking her posts and using traditional language in her captions to try to secure her account.

The Yukon News spoke to at least two other Inuit designers whose photos were being used by scammers.

Despite having “zero” hope of getting his money back, Terpstra said he took action to try to get the business’s account taken down by reporting it to Facebook. He also made a report to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre and wrote a blog post about what to do when you get scammed.

Terpstra said he struggled with shame and the narrative that only gullible or unintelligent people get scammed, but remembered a friend who had worked in banking for 40 years only to confide that she, too, had been scammed when she retired.

“If she can fall prey to a scam, anyone can,” he said.

“You need to be gentle with yourself around this situation. It’s OK to be human.”

Facebook offers advice to those shopping on Marketplace: don’t send money without confirming there is a real product.

The company suggests trying to confirm the product’s existence and ownership in person or over a video call before sending payment.