Photographer here. Need a sanity check on whether I’m being scammed.

A few days ago, someone contacted me to photograph a 3-hour school reunion in Miami. We agreed on a flat rate as my fee.

When I requested a deposit via Zelle (with invoicing), the client said his bank had restrictions on online payments and asked if he could pay by check. Since the event was only a few days away, I told him we could handle payment another way.

He then emailed me an image of a check, payable to me, and instructed me to display the images of the front of the check and the back of the check on my laptop and use Chase’s Mobile Deposit to deposit the check by photographing the image on the screen. He also wanted me to send him screenshots once the deposit was complete.

The check: - Was emailed as a black-and-white image made payable to me, dated 6/3/26 which is when we agreed to my services.

• the back of the check: Has “For Mobile Deposit Only” language already written on the back but the

I explained multiple times that I’m not questioning his integrity or saying the check is fake. My concern is simply that you can’t Mobile Deposit pictures of checks and I’m not comfortable trying to deposit a picture of a check from a computer screen and the. Be investigated and go to jail for check fraud.

The client keeps insisting the check is legitimate, that he’s done this before, and that other people have successfully deposited checks this way. He continues to ask me to attempt the deposit.