Back in 2015

Rick got a scam email from “Ken” wanting to ship shirts to the Solomon Islands. No address, no phone number, broken English, and a credit card as the payment method. Rick’s advice was simple: if it’s too good to be true, it is. Delete it and move on. Phony orders scam screen printers 2026

That advice still holds. But in 2026, the scam emails don’t look like “Ken” wrote them anymore.

AI-generated phishing

Has eliminated the grammatical errors and clumsy phrasing that used to be the easiest red flags. According to KnowBe4’s 2025 Phishing Trends Report, nearly 83% of phishing emails now contain AI-generated content. A study by Brightside AI found that AI-crafted phishing emails achieve a 54% click-through rate compared to 12% for traditional phishing, a 4.5x effectiveness multiplier. The poorly written “Dear Customer” email is now a perfectly worded, personalized message that references your website, your services, and sometimes even your recent social media posts.

The Printing and Imaging Association of Georgia published an updated alert noting that print industry scams have only become more sophisticated. The pattern is familiar, large generic orders, insistence on credit card payment, mismatched billing and shipping addresses, urgency to process, but now scammers use legitimate-looking email addresses, real company names (without those companies’ knowledge), and even phone numbers that appear valid. Some scammers now pose as “brokers” placing orders on behalf of recognizable companies that have no idea their name is being used.

And it’s not just email. AI scams surged 1,210% in 2025, and voice cloning now requires just three seconds of audio to create an 85% accurate replica of someone’s voice. The FBI’s IC3 recorded $16.6 billion in cybercrime losses in 2024, a 33% year-over-year increase, with AI-enhanced social engineering driving a growing share. Small businesses are particularly vulnerable because they often have fewer controls and more informal verification processes.

Rick’s original checklist from 2015 is still the foundation:

• The real litmus test is as I wrote in the title, if too good to be true it probably is. People don’t email you out of the blue and order thousands of shirts (particularly to go to the Solomon Islands.)
• No address or phone number? What kind of idiot with a legit business wouldn’t include that. In this case, that is what makes it obvious, “Ken” didn’t bother to give a business or any info that would even remotely suggest this is legit.
• Drop ship locations are often a bad sign. Use Google and check and see what the actual location looks like. We had what seemed like possibly a real order until we used Google and looked at the delivery address and it was not a commercial neighborhood.
• Lone operators are a bad sign, how many companies do you know where you can only reach one person?
• Poorly written letters are possibly a bad sign. “We anticipate, your prompt reply.” That doesn’t seem like the way anyone I know ends an email. And I have a feeling that “Dear Customer” as the start of this email is not Solomon Islands charm. We aren’t grammar police nor do we want to badly treat non-native English speakers,  but it can be a piece of the puzzle when the other elements don’t add up.
• Just because they offer to use a credit card or even a bank check doesn’t mean it is legit, there are many cases of stolen bank checks even.
• Don’t follow their link to a website or use their info to call. Look up the business and call what you find when you look it up. Crooks make marvelous fake websites and even set up dummy company phone lines. Don’t use their links, independently look up the site and phone number.

But add these 2026 layers:

Never trust perfect grammar alone as a sign of legitimacy.

Independently verify any new customer by looking up the company yourself, not through any link or number they provide.

If a “broker” places the order, contact the end customer directly to confirm.

Be suspicious of anyone who isn’t concerned about price.

And if someone wants to pay immediately with a credit card for a large order from a company you’ve never heard of, that urgency is the scam.

Phony orders scam screen printers 2026. The scammers got smarter. Your instincts need to keep up.