Woman looking for a Nanny on Craigslist

Earlier this year I moved back home from Hawaii and was in need of a job, so I replied to a craigslist post for a temporary nanny position. She was looking for a "responsible self starter" or something like that. It was pretty vague. The lad replied in very broken english and the entire story was just weird! First there were a few inconsistencies with her being married and then widowed. But her story was something about how her company was sending her on a business trip from canada to my area (another inconsistency, b ut we'll get to that later) and every day I was to report to her place (I was thinking "Hotel room??") for x-amount of hours. I ended up looking up the address she gave me and it was a house on the same street of the daycare I used to work at. I was really curious if the people that lived there had any idea what was going on, but I'm sure they didn't. Also, she said Clackamas County/Oregon City area (which is where I live) but the address was for SE Portland - almost 25 miles away from oregon city and in a completely different county LOL And of course she was looking for someone who was God fearing, which (even being a believer) kind of weirded me out because working in daycare for 4 years the only thing I could think of was "great this woman doesn't believe in disciplining her child, does she??" Not saying Christians don't discipline their children, it was just the way she worded it made me think there was no way I was going to be able get away with putting the kid in time out if i needed to. And she asked me for my contact information (phone number address name) and I gave it to her thinking she just wanted to do a background check on me - If I were hiring a nanny last minute on craigslist I'd do the same thing, so I reaally didn't think anything of it.

But after that email I just had a really bad feeling about it. Then I got a duplicate word for word email the next day that was meant for somebody else. So now I'm thinking "I just told her I was going to take this job, why is she hiring someone else....? and way to copy and paste..."

The next email I got from her was the one that scared the shit out of me. She said her business was going pay for everything including the child care, I just needed to name my price. Then she said the company was going to write the check of all the expenses out to ME and I had to cash it, take out my share, and wire the rest of the money back to her. I already gave this woman my address name and phone number. I was scared shitless. I didn't know what to do, so I emailed her back saying I have another job that I might take, so I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to take this job. Please don't send the check until I'm sure." Of course I contacted my local authorities, they said they couldn't do anything. I contacted craigslist and I got no response back from them. I never received the check thank God!!

Hi Wannab8, welcome here.

You did the right thing saying you allready found another job and ask the scammer not to send the check. The local authorities can't do much as the scammer never send you a fake check thus didn't commit a crime. Unfortunatly the scammer has some real information about you but it looks like the scammer doesn't bother to contact you again as he could be busy with other victims. You could expect to find some other scam emails in your mailbox now. As long as you don't reply with that email address those scam emails will eventually stop coming in.
You could post the emails from this scammer in this topic with your real life info left out so that others can be warned.