I have seen this scam around from at least 2008 or so. A business owner has emailed you, a web designer or webmaster and they want a “farm website”. They will ask if you are the owner of the web design business but they already know because they targeted you as a web designer by finding your website in the first place.
This alleged farm company will have a generous budget for their website and they have their own graphic designer who makes their logos and other assets, they just want you to set up a theme and the pages of the site.
DO NOT MAKE THEM A QUOTE! It is a waste of your time.
A real farm will have a physical address, a phone number, and can show you a business license or verify their existence in solid way. They will not email you from some usually very strange sounding gmail account.
Often they will send you to a popular theme showing how they want the website to look.
I received another one of these scam emails today and they pointed me to this lovely farm theme example from Betheme
The first clues you had were that it is a farm theme and that they have their own graphic designer. The third clue comes after you give them a quote. Go ahead, bid high, they’ve already told you their generous budget so quote your worth. You will receive an affirmative follow up email saying that everything appears to be acceptable.
You may trade a few more emails, maybe they’ll question a certain cost but eventually they will explain to you that there’s a small favor they need to finalize giving you this account. They need to pay you your deposit and a bit extra. And because their designer does not have a traditional bank account and the owner does not have a Venmo, Square, Stripe, Google Pay, Cash App, etc, could you just forward that from the overage on your deposit? A good business will not ask you to pay their other developers from a check they give to you. You will deposit the check and they will hurry you to payout the graphic designer and when you do, they will disappear, their check will cancel or bounce and you will be out whatever amount you sent to the graphic designer.
I haven’t seen this scam a whole lot but I have seen it at ten times in ten years. It takes a little more work than most online scams.
And now you know!