a thread should be started here and on your site with the name in the title... or nobody will every find this info.   She was smart enough to leave her name off the site as far as I can tell but I didnt go through the entire site....  these people should be contacted as she claims to be affiliated with them

Professional Photographers  Association of New Jersey
      New Jersey Videographers Association

she is also claiming to be a cosmetology school     
Cosmetology School     cosmetologyschools@yinyangcosmetics.com


I can not believe this woman stepped right back into this business her services haven't changed much  but she may have been smarter this time and she may have purchased the photos used as ads...

In my opinion it wasn't fair for them to put Russ in jail and not her...a condition of parole could have been to find a new career... I just thought with her reputation she would have had to...but the way young artists come in and out of the business she knew there would be an endless supply of naive young women...oh well, the fun starts again

the new company name will be how most people will encounter her...  yin yan cosmetics

In NJ, she needs a teacher's license to teach.  State Board of Cosmetology already dinged her for it, and had her under investigation a few years ago.

Further, to do makeup services inside a salon, as she is now, she needs at the very least an esthetician license.  She does not have a license of any sort.

Furthermore, her ex-husband set up her business to literally scam people.  He would claim she was going to host classes, take payment, usually not hold the class, and never refund.  Sometimes he double or triple charged credit cards for the class, and the kit.  And, because he was former military and trainer at a health club, he was a big guy, which he used to intimidate people into accepting that they were not going to get their money back.  We're all sure Dawn was part of this scam.  The police, however, never found proof.   There were some months that they made as much as $80k on the scam.

It seems she's now enlisted the help of another guy to be her partner, and she's starting all over again.  Whether the scam has started up again, we don't know, but we do owe it to newer artists to be on the lookout.

oooops, emelle and I typing at the same time


there is years of history behind the story....  these people made a living out of stealing money from wannabe artists... they got away with it for years... Double charging credit cards, setting up bogus classes that never happened but were paid for.... harassing anyone that tried to get their money back...  calling artists and threatening them, it was all very bazaar and this went on for years until he was finally arrested and put in jail...    They targeted young new wannabe artists and had a very elaborate scheme, they made it work a long time and made a good chunk of change no doubt

The wife (Dawn) according to most people that knew them both insisted she was the brains behind it (and from what I learned over the years I agree with this)   and he did the dirty work for her....  that was never proved in court and I dont think anyone officially even looked into that, it was too easy to just stick him in jail....proving she was the brains in the operation would be very difficult... but she knew what he was doing, and when we confronted her she ignored it and the next thing you know we're getting threatening calls from him....

he would call our spouses and say really nasty things...he would post our numbers on "dating" websites....I mean it went on and on....this guy was a master at harassment and intimidation...they had a LOT of victims....but then he messed with the wrong people and that was the end of him    and now she's back and it looks like business as usual under another name (company name)  but her covers blown now thanks to Emelle who will keep this alive until Dawns in a nursing home somewhere or out of the business for good... And I'm right behind you Emelle

It is great to keep people informed but is there a place you can report to? I know in Canada we have a phone line we can call called "Phone Busters" and it's an anonymous line where you can report possible illegal businesses and fraud. Do you have something like that in the US?

she has to do something illegal first and we have to find out about it, unfortunately unethical isn't enough to bother the authorties
.... We can then report it and they may investigate after a few complaints...5 or 6, not just one..   Because fraud is so rampant here I dont think it gets much attention

aw.... that's so weak.

Edit: Wait a tick... define Fraud.

fraud - deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage.

If she has no license to teach, and is advertising workshops that she will be instructing and needs a license for, she is for all intents and purposes, committing fraud. She is accepting money for a service she cannot legally provide. You think the police would do a little bit more.

Many of the pics on the Yin Yang Cosmetics site are a whole lot better than the previous round of pics.  It would be assumed that she did the work, although it's never clearly stated anywhere.  With the previous round of cratastic pics on their site, if they got as much as $80k a month, then imagine how much they could get off much better pictures...

Boggled....

I only have suspicions, no valid proof of any sort, on one in New Jersey - definitely a graduate of DtD, because I talked to her and she worships Dawn.  The other is a traveling school that I suspect as well, but I've never heard any complaints other than don't bother as they didn't learn much.

It's not a scam if they offer a class, the student pays actual tuition, and then attends, even if the education offered wasn't worth the certificate they are offering at the end.  The service that was contracted was performed.  It's the double and triple charging, the no show classes, and the very unique refund policy that made DtD the scam.

exactly...... a lot of people make money giving classes, even if they suck you can't label it a scam...  you can call it unethical but not a scam.

And this is one small example of why being certified isn't all it's cracked up to be. Aspiring artists should focus less on that piece of paper and more on researching the school and it's instructors. There are many variables that come into play, ie: the quality of training you receive, the school's reputation, your ability to apply learned techniques in real life scenarios, etc. -SIGH-

+100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

I tell this to artists all the time do your research before picking a school. make sure you are being taught by people that are working/have worked in the field you want to be in. and be sure they have good references.

I Look for stolen photos or really bad photos

I look for someone with a resume and no pictures of anything in the resume....I mean what kind of artist would put up a sight and omit their most prized possession, their portfolio?

great resume without the pictures is really the best way to tell..if they aren't print artists they should at least pop up on IMDB somewhere .... no pictures, no  trace of their work on any official sites = unethical probably.... but maybe not a scammer in the legal sense.  I hear about the real scammers through email usually.... a lot of people find my Q and A and just email me about  things that have happened to them..   When I get more than one email about the same operation it usually makes me want to investigate further

LisaJohnson wrote:
Mary, someone needs to write a the definative book on what to look for when becoming a makeup artist.    a very small but informative informational pamphlet to say the least. 

hint hint nudge nudge say no more

*Coughs and seconds the motion*

I was reading about this on Em's board yesterday.  While I'm glad Russ has been punished, not impressed that she's out there again.

No it's not.  In the list of "At this location" is Healing Zone, which is the spa that Yin Yang Cosmetics works out of.

they used to set classes up in hotels but they didnt actually hold the class, they just sold them....2 or 3 locations at the same date and time.... I doubt that she's doing something that bold after watching her husband go to jail.. It could be that she is sharing a space and so her name isn't on it...

Hey, guess what? She IS doing something that bold.

She said her classes are too large to be held at the spa.
So she either rents out a photographer studio for a week.
Or she rents a convention space at a hotel for a week.

She is calling me back later.

She also said that she does make-up for the news anchors for Fox Business.

I believe she did once.  If you look at her Facebook page, I think for Yin Yang Cosmetics, but maybe under her name, she does show an image of a Fox News anchor in a makeup style that I know very well to be hers.  So I know she did the makeup once.

She has a strong tendency to over exaggerate.  While still Dawn til Dusk, she was claiming to be the makeup artist for the Maury Show, and suggested she was Maury's artist.  Some digging found out that she was occasionally called in, mostly for the drag shows, and only on the guests.  Considering someone else won an emmy for makeup on that show one of the years she claimed to be "the artist", it was a pretty funny f-up.

That's not how it went down.  The police believed she was involved, but Dawn was smarter than Russ and manipulated things so that she'd never get caught.  They simply couldn't find anything on her, and the licensing issue is civil, not criminal.