Job Scam (I give them Credit...they had me going)

Hello!

I am a professional dancer who offers dance lessons to make some extra cash. It works well for me, I even have an advertisement of sorts on a dance website. I am a cautious person, so my ad does not include my name or number, only my gmail account.

I often receive emails from potential clients asking for a resume and rates. I got one a couple days ago from a woman calling herself Amber Sanders saying she wanted a ballet tutor for her daughter, Kimberly. Thinking nothing of it, I replied to her with my rates. After I sent the email I checked her address, and noticed it was a yahoo.co.uk (English) email. I live in Michigan, so I was confused as to why someone in England would ask me for dance lessons.

I receive a reply saying she does in fact live in London, but her sister lives in my city and Kimberly would be living with her for a few weeks. Since she would be away from her regular dance classes, she wanted a private tutor to help her keep up. She and her husband thought my rates were agreeable and they were excited to book me for X amounts of lesson for X number of days, which amounted to $550. I replied saying this would be fine. I also asked for more information about Kimberly's dance experience, and for her sister's name and address so I could contact her for verification.

This is where the scammer kicked it up a notch. I receive a reply sounding so excited about our deal! She explains to me that Kimberly had a different private tutor who had to quit due to a death in the family, but Amber (the scammer) and her husband had already paid him in advance for Kimberly's lessons, but he promised to make arrangements to get the money to Kimberly's new teacher. As I'm sure you've guessed by now, the money could only be transferred to me via Western Union. It was explained to me that I would need to provide Amber with my full name, address and phone number so that she could send me a check for $1850. I was to deduct my share ($550) from that and send the remaining $1300 to Kimberly's travel agent via Western Union and that would be Kimberly's spending money while she is in the States. She even made up a detailed story about how all expenses had to be handled by the travel agent because Kimberly was a minor and that was required by the US Embassy. (And by the way, she never did address my question about who her sister was.)

Thankfully I am not an idiot and smelled a scam by now. I wanted to see how far I could push it, so I replied as if it really were Amber I was speaking to me. I told her I wasn't comfortable handling all of Kimberly's travel money, I would rather just receive my share. (I did this because she asked me if her proposed method of payment was ok, I wanted to see what else she would come up with.) She replied asking me to please reconsider. Blah blah blah, she didn't have a bank account that would allow her to send international currency, it would take too long to convert pounds to dollars, blah blah. Then she said "You seem like an honest person, my husband and I have no trouble trusting you with the money."

I sent one last email (not really sure why) saying no, give me $550 cash or Western Union money order, or no deal. Needless to say, no reply.

I am so glad I didn't fall for this, because I was truly convinced up until the Western Union talk. I am a starving artist of sorts, but not so starving I'm stupid! Never EVER accept any deal that wants you to use Western Union. That's my story! I hope it can help open someone's eyes.

[AlanJones]

Hi Ballerina13 and welcome to ScamWarners.

Congratulations on recognising this as the scam that it is. Could you post the scammer's email address and initial email as that may help others from being scammed.

Original Email:

Hello there,
How are you doing today and I hope you and your family are having an enjoyable weekend as i am here with mine.My husband and i are searching for a qualified dance tutor for our 15yr daughter,her name is kimberly and her intetrests are ballet and hip-hop.If you are available and qualified,kindly get back to me with your hourly rates and hopefully an arrangement can be duly made then.
Regards,
Amber.

Again, "she" went by the name of Amber Sanders, email address [email protected]

Quotes added for clarity - Michelle

Hi Ballerina

Thank you for posting the email and email address, if you have any questions please ask

The only other hit on that email address at the moment was posted by you, makes it even more important to get the details out, well done

Ok this is too funny....

Two weeks later, I just received the exact same email she originally sent me!!! She obviously forgot that she had already asked me.

This is a very sloppy scammer, she'll be ound out in no time.

This type of scammer will trawl various listing sites looking for anyone an everyone who fits his style of scamming.

He will not have singled you out, in fact he will be trying the same scam on with many others at the same time. That is why he didn't notice he had mailed you before ... (not that it matters to the scammer)

You are a dancing teacher. You could have been teaching piano or taekwon-do. The scammer would have just modified his approach.

Well done for spotting that it was a scam before loosing money .... many people do not !

Thank you for posting this on here! I got an email from the same person over the weekend about tutoring which was odd because I got a different email for a bio tutor and math tutor when summer is just about to start. It seemed odd to me and I always research people before I agree to tutor for them. My original email was exactly the same as yours it was just altered to tutoring, his helped me so much!!

Also I received the email from [email protected]

Hi Lep, welcome to Scamwarners,

I am glad that you have realised its a scam before losing any money.

Researching people before doing business is always a good idea but do be careful as not every scammer has details of their scam posted on line.

Thank you for posting, if you ever have any questions, please dont hesitate to ask

Oh, that's actually a quite well done scam but as soon as the money comes in the alarm bells start to ring. The thing with the Western Union transfer is too obvious. It's not easy to refuse such "offers", especially when you're in need of money - respect for refusing it and thanks for letting us know about scammer.

I'm sure you're happy that you didn't lose any money but that's not the worst part. If you bank the counterfeit check, this bcomes a matter for the US Secret Service, not the police or even the FBI, and many victims have gone to jail even though they were the ones to lose money.

This is a nasty type of scam where losing money is the least of your problems if you gat snared by these criminals. They'll be answering hundreds of ads a day, and they only need one per cent to respond positively to make a good living destroying other peoples lives.

I'm so glad this thread was posted. I was recently contacted by them for a math tutoring job, and almost the exact same story was sloppily sent to me (Amber Sanders, joyfulamber at a uk yahoo email adress, daughter Kimberly is staying with sister, etc). I became suspicious when Amber's grammar and spelling were so sloppy (she said she was into real estate). My hunch was confirmed when she wanted to wire me a large amount ($2250) to my western union account (i don't even have one!). I spoke to my law school graduate sister (yet to pass the bar) and she says this is a common strategy for money launderers. I'm lucky in a way since I came across a scam before with money laundering, so I cal spot them right away. Deals that are too good to be true, usually are. Anyway, after reading this thread, I won't contact them anymore.

Here's a very similar story. The scammer is posing as "John Harry" with email address [email protected] this time. Below is message sent to me

Hello Tutor,

Thanks for replying back to our online job posting, You will be teaching him any of this BA & MS or BS requiring your tutor service for my son, I would like to make a tutoring arrangement between you and my son for the month. End of June 2010, I would like you to tutor him within a period of 1month, on a schedule basis of 1hr Daily, 3 times weekly, totaling 12 times in a month. I am willing to pay any amount So i would like you to get back to me with the total amount for your services for these period of time in which you would be tutoring him. I would like to use these medium to inform you that my son does not live in the US, he would be flying from Uk ( England here ) to the US, I want you to teach him Math during his 1month stay in the US, hes name Mike and he is 20yrs old if there is need to extend your services, an ammedment would be made to your salary. The Local Library would be your meeting place with him, he would be dropped off/picked up by his nanny during the hours of teaching and i all be waiting for your sweet respond asap....

Call....+447024085866

Hi Scammer Hater, welcome to Scamwarners.

I am glad you got suspicious and asked questions, well done on avoiding being scammed

One ehuge warning sign is the phone number, Phone numbers starting with 4470 are a UK redirect service, these phone numbers can be set up by anybody from anywhere in the world, most commonly Africa, calls to these numbers are redirected to any phone in the world, a person who actually was in the UK would have no need for such a phone number, a scammer pretending to be in the UK while sitting in an African internet cafe on the other hand

Please take a look around and if you have any questions please ask

I agree, this was very convincing.

Mine was along all of these same lines - 15 year old daughter in need of help with math tutoring, algebra, specifically.

Here are the e-mail addresses she used.

[email protected]
[email protected]

Welcome here Fred Taylor.

Could you please post the scammer's emails that he has send you? Preferably with the full headers. If you don't know how to get the full headers, just ask.