Childcare for twins for deaf mom coming to my area

I'm a nanny and I post online for my services. When you have to do that, it's hit and miss to find a good family.
Here are the relevant elements from the most recent scam someone has tried to pull on me.

Name the Scammer used: NICOLE ADAMS
Email: [email protected]
City: (Claims) Dallas, TX

Deaf mom of 3 year old twins supposedly coming to my area for a deaf people's conference (none of the local deaf organizations have an event scheduled in my area) for a two week duration.

She said she's from Dallas, but I checked her IP, she's in California.

Offered me nearly twice the pay I was asking, then wanted to send me money for their entertainment items, including a new Dell Laptop.

She never checked my references.

Total amount of check she wanted to send me: $2625.

I wasted 6 hours of email communication on this person, when I could have been find a legit job. I'm going to spend 2 hours posting her info and the details to all the scam sites and also I'm studying more scams so that I don't waste so much time in the future.

At this moment the scammer does not know that I know it's a scam. Likely they are using the same email address and info right now to round up many other prospective victims.

Hi,

I got a similiar email but she said the check will be on the way. And her name for me is Nicole Johnson not Nicole Adams. Email me if you get a chance at removed email address - users can be contacted via pm system - dotti
Thanks!

Welcome Twinkies,

I have removed your email address from your post. Placing your email address on a public forum such as this one is a good way to attract even more scammers and spammers and is not recommended.

In case you are not aware of how this scam works (and there is no doubt it is a scam) this is a fake check scam. The scammer (who is most likely in Africa, not the US) will send (or will have a mule send) will be a fake or written on phished/stolen account info. It will likely look good enough to pass initial review, but at some point down the road the bank will discover the truth. Either way, by depositing that check and withdrawing money from it, you would be guilty of check fraud and ultimately will be held liable for any money withdrawn, plus fees and possible criminal charges.

If you do receive a check, do NOT attempt to cash it. There are several options as to what you can do:
-contact the issuing bank to alert them of a possible compromised account
-take it to your local police
-shred it
-write "FAKE" very clearly and in large print so there is no way anyone can attempt to cash it, then keep it as a souvenir and educational tool.

Either tell the scammers that you are no longer interested, or just stop replying entirely. Ignore any threats from the scammers (they may also send additional fake emails from the police, FBI, EFCC, etc.)--at this point you are not guilty of anything criminal and you have nothing to fear.

THANK YOU for posting this. I too was contacted by a Nicole Johnson with two twins who will be 3 next month (August). I asked her for more personal information such as if the kids hear, are they in diapers, what time do they take naps, etc. She replied back to both of my e-mails the same way. She has yet to answer any personal information I ask of her which I found odd as I'd like to have some background information on her so called "kids." She wanted my address and my name to put it on her payroll. I wouldn't give it to her and instead asked her for the company's name plus city they're in as my husband wants to make sure they're a legit company before I give her any personal info. I told her that I will not being giving out my social security number, any bank info., etc. via e-mail. She claimed that she sent a picture of herself with her kids but didn't attach it. I googled for a deaf convention that she talked about when she first contacted me. I couldn't find anything with that name at all which should've been my first red flag. She wouldn't tell me what city she was coming to either as the area is a big area with lots of other cities nearby. She stopped communicating with me over 2 weeks ago and just now popped back up again. She changed the dates on me because one of her children was injured in a fall from some stairs. Is this was a legit convention the dates would be in concrete and over a weekend too not a 2 week job. She stated that she orders car seats, toys and games from a store in KS which doesn't make any sense to me if she supposedly lives in TX. Why not bring the car seats she already has for the kids vs buying new ones? It's a scam. Like the saying always says if it's too good to be true it probably is. Stay clear of her as she's up to something illegal and will be interested to see if she does reply back since I'm asking for a company's name with a city. I'm glad that I kept googling her name to see if I could find any more information on her. This is what led me here.

Ask them what type of cochlear implants they have and the name of the sign language they use to communicate with their children. The scammers may be able to Google up some information but it won't be hard to uncover that they're actually clueless.

These would be quite normal questions to ask any real parent of a deaf child and they would tend to 'over answer' a question like that, whereas a scammer will give the briefest possible response. A real parent would have a lot to say about their choices, struggles and decisions and would unload on you with all sorts of extra detail. A scammer would answer like they're responding to a general knowledge question with as little detail as possible.

Are the children profoundly deaf ? - were they deaf from birth ? - is it genetic or was it an illness ? Apart from being distasteful to scam using a disabled child as the pretext, it's also understandable that you need to know about the children's disabilities and can more easily catch out a scammer.

I would have thought that any parent of disabled children who didn't want to interview you in person before employing you is most likely to be a scammer. If their major interest is in pushing a cheque into your hands so that they can think of a way of getting you to turn part of it into cash or consumer electronics, then that's just final confirmation that they're cheque counterfeiters.

I'm glad I posted about this scammer. I figured they would use the same elements in their story, putting me on payroll, a store in Ks, deaf mom, she has a driver, all that nonsense.
A friend of mine is a model and she encounters scammers that want to send her a check want her to use part of it to pay the photographer. After my scam encounter, she knew it had to be a scam too.

Hi tillieann .. I think that it is brilliant that you've been able to alert your friend to scams, too. Being able to recognise scams is a wonderful defence against them. And that is such a good thing that has come out of your experience.

Same thing happened to me. Same story, even the child falling down the stairs and delaying the trip. She sent me the check and I noticed that the endorser was a totally different name. I questioned her and she claimed it was her husbands payroll. Being naive and wanting to believe the best in people I deposited the check. After that she wanted me to wire money to someone in a totally different state of over $2,000. I google the address and it was a nature center. I asked her who this person was and she said it was her personal shopper. I kept asking more questions and she got defensive using the deaf guilt trip. I lead her on and said I would wire the money as soon as the check cleared, although she didn't want me to wait (big surprise). By this time I was pretty sure it was a scam so I alerted my bank and the forged check's bank (being that this was a stolen check b/c these ppl came up in my google search). The check bounced and I brought in the check and the FedEx shipping address to the bank. My father-in-law works for FedEx and these ppl actually have an account. I gave all the info to the fraud dept. Best part was that in the beginning "Nicole" told me her kids' names her James and Ashley. By the last email, her son's name magically changed to David. Although I fell for it initially, I hope I got enough information from them to catch them. If it's too good to be true, it probably is...

Welcome Lizzie,

I'm glad you caught this before you sent any money to this scammer. Even if your bank charged you fees for the check, you were saved from a much bigger loss.

Unfortunately, don't be surprised if you see this thread go, or the same format under a new name, because it is not likely that the scammer is going to be caught and arrested. None of the information the scammer gave you is real. The scammer is most likely in Africa or is an African student in Malaysia. If you can post the extended headers of one of "her" emails (most likely the actual person behind the emails is a young male) and the scammer is not hiding behind a proxy, we might be able to identify the country this scammer is operating from.

However, the real account owner who may not have known his or her checking account was compromised, and the (very likely innocent) owner of the fedex account or credit card (these scammers often use phished or hacked shipping accounts, or they open accounts using fake or stolen info and stolen credit cards) will likely be helped by your actions, and other victims may be saved when those accounts are flagged, since the scammer has most likely sent checks to several victims.

Please feel free to come back here to report any other scammers you encounter during your search--law enforcement is often powerless to act on these scammers, but we can help to stop them through education!

Hi Lizzie.
Checks don't always bounce so quickly. It can take weeks or months sometimes. US banks have to give access to funds in a couple of days, so the initial clearance is incomplete.

The time limits on returning cheques don't apply to counterfeits. If it takes a year to be spotted, then you won't be ble to stop it being charged back to your account. That's why scammers will always press for cash to be sent at the earliest possible moment. Most banks only gve cheques the most cursory inspection, and if it's a professional forgery, it'll be down to their customer to notice it, and if it's a company cheque it could take weeks if there's a large volume going through the account.

The double whammy you suffer in this type of scam is that you not only lose money, but you have your credit record and banking relationship destroyed, but you could always go to jail for passing counterfeit paper, not that a scammer cares.