You’ve posted on Archive of Our Own or a similar site that welcomes fanfiction. You get a few hits here, a couple of kudos there. Suddenly you get a comment, and you’re thrilled. They love your work! They want to create something in regards to it.

Sometimes they don’t talk about creating art, a comic panel, or otherwise suggest something creative until the 2nd comment. They may suggest that you leave the site for Discord or another social media. They might even aim you in the direction of their portfolio to show that they’re a genuine artist.

Well, you start talking and you find out they want money for their art. Also reference pictures, which if they are supposedly a fan of the media in question you might think is odd. But you go with it. And eventually they might actually give you something, or just block you and run off with your money. And that art is either awful or AI generated. You’ve been ripped off.

Note that while this normally occurs on fanfiction sites to fanfiction authors, it may happen on any site related to creative works.

How to protect yourself
Many fanfiction related sites do not tolerate anything related to commercial activity. This is due to the grey area that fanfiction and other fan works inhabit - the owners of the properties fans are using tend to turn a blind eye to noncommercial fan works but are not so lenient towards commercial works. And so fan archives tend to ban commercial activity on their site - for example, Archive of Our Own forbids it under their Terms of Service, section II.C. Which is why these scammers want to lead authors off-platform, away from the protection of the main site.

The general consensus in the community is that anybody who suggests that they can make an artwork of any kind for your fic is a scammer - no decent fan artist advertises on someone else’s story, they know better. Look for the abuse contact for the site in question - for example, Archive of their Own has a form, while another site, fanfiction[.]net has you send an email with the word “[abuse]” in the subject line. In any case, do not reply, do not let them take you elsewhere. Leave it up to the site admins to take care of the scammer for you.