Au-pair family, is it a scam???

FIRST E-MAIL RECEIVED FROM THE WEBPAGE:

Message from X Family
Hello,

I'm XXX, I'm XXX's husband.from Valley Stream,New york USA. I saw and read your profile on Au pair.com. We are looking for someone to get our Daughter who will be 4 years old next 3 weeks ready in the morning,prepare and clear up the family's breakfast, make the beds, and take my daughter to school.The Au Pair would then need to pick her up in the afternoon and look after the kid until we get back home from work. We have a very hardworking cleaner, so there will not be any heavy housework.There is a bit of light cleaning and laundry so there would be more free time in the day to go to language school if you wish or any other cultural activities that might interest you. Feel free to email me on this email XXXXX although the email belongs to my wife. so i can tell you more about what you work day would look like when you arrive here. hope to read form you soon.


MY E-MAIL SENT TO X:


Dear X Family,

Thank you for your e-mail. I don't know if you have read that I could go to the U.S.A. only in August. If this is not a problem I would be happy to send you more information if you want.

I would like to see some photos of your family. I found a lot of scans asking for money in advance and I'm a little frightened to finsh in a fake family.

I look forward to hearing from you soon,



X''S ANSWER:

Hi

Thanks for the email, I really liked all you wrote to me and i am convinced you are really interested in coming here to work and i will make sure we achieve that. I am aware you can only come here by August. i will wait for you but before we proceed, i will be asking you some questions which i need you to answer so i can document them. The questions are below:

Abilities of Aupair:

Have you ever traveled outside your home country before?
Have you much experience working with kid’s ?
Do you have a qualification ?
Which country are you from?
Can you get ready my Daughter for school and packing her lunch ?
Driving my Daughter to school, appointments and extracurricular activities ?
Supervising homework ?
Preparing my Daughter's meals ?
Bathing, dressing and putting my daughter to bed ?
Supervising and playing with my Daughter ?
Helping to keep my Daughter's rooms tidy?
Doing Daughter's laundry ?
Assisting with light household duties ?
As we live in the countryside it can be quiet ?
Do you smoke ?
Do you drink ?
Can you help with housework ?
Do you have brothers and sisters ?


Benefit:

The Au Pair will be paid a weekly Salary of $1,450 for every 3 weeks and a pocket money of $180 per week. I will be needing you to work for at least 6 months or 1 year but if you cant stay up to 6 months, it is negotiable. I will also be responsible for some of the funds for your traveling documents.

I have attached some pictures of my family and most especially pictures of our lovely daughter. she is fun to be with and i know you will love her. send me some pictures of you and your family also and some certificate to prove you have not committed any crime in your country. Thanks




WHAT DO YOU THINK? IS IT A SCAM? I DON'T KNOW IF I SHOULD ANSWER... PLEASE I HOPE YOUR OPINION.


---- I edited the message omitting the personal information, I present the scammer with the benefit of the doubt---------

Welcome to Scamwarners.
That's definitely a scam. The English isn't bad, but not written by anyone from the USA.

hi, i was also receive this e mail and he also sent me pictures of their family., is this really a scam? we are exchanging e mails since on Monday.

need help pleased

Unfortunately, there is absolutely no doubt this is a scam. The photos were simply copied from the internet, probably a facebook page or equivalent. The writer is not the person in the photos.

The scammer is counting on the fact that his targets are from countries in which English is not the primary language, and they are less likely to recognize his mistakes and unusual phrasing of some things. The writing tells me beyond a doubt that the author is African, not American.

If the child is going to be 4, then she would be 3 now. Three year old American children have not started regular school yet. If he were an American father, he would know what kind of facility his child attended. He also wouldn't refer to her as "the kid" later in the email. This is typical of a scammer who plans to use the script multiple times, and has written it so that he doesn't have to change the name or sex in many places.

And, he has actually used parts of this script before. Notice that this exact same section was used in another au-pair scam--all he did was change the name and age (in red). This scam letter was posted almost a year ago.

From here:
http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=14183

We are looking for someone to get our Daughter(Claudia) who will be 6 years old next 3 weeks ready in the morning,prepare and clear up the family's breakfast, make the beds, and take my daughter to school.The Au Pair would then need to pick her up in the afternoon and look after the kid until we get back home from work. We have a very hardworking cleaner, so there will not be any heavy housework.

Welcome here Berebe and Hizel.

Berebe and Hizel, their is absolutely no doubt that you are in contact with an au pair scammer! Best thing to do now is to cease contact, just ignore the emails from him and he will leave you alone. The person who is writing to you is not an American mother, who is looking for an au pair for her family. It is an internet criminal from either Nigeria, or Malaysia, who is writing these emails to you from an internet café. The purpose of these scams is to make you pay for non existent travel papers, visa, work permits and whatever else the scammer can invent. These should then be payd via western union, or money gram, which is the favorite way of scammers.
Could you please put the names back, and post the email addresses this scammer is using? Then other potential victims can find it here when they search for information, and when they find it here, they are warned.

Yes please reinstate the details. As you talk about giving the scammer the benefit of the doubt, I'm not sure that you really do accept that he is a scammer. He is, and there is no doubt about it whatsoever.

haha...Yesterday I got the same message ))

To all of you who received these emails:

Can you post the name and email address this scammer is using, so others he targets have a better chance of finding out it is a scam before they lose money?

Edit: Scammer is using name Mr Anthony Tillisch, supposed wife's name is Laura. Still need email address

The letter came from this email address [email protected]

Mr Anthony Tillisch, I'm Laura's husband.from Valley Stream,New york USA.

and he left a phone number
Tillisch Family.
Mr. Anthony Tillisch
+1 516 303 2874
I dont know, should I write a site, where you can see a profile of his wife?

Thank you Kseniya,

Posting that info will help others who might otherwise fall for the scam.

Hi,

I'm from Spain and I've received the same email. I had to check before the info but I didn't so I have sent them the scan of my passport and my details (name, adress, phone number). Do you think they could do something against me??

Help pleaseee!!

Thank you so much

While it's never ideal, what you sent isn't enough for true identity theft, and the scammer is not coming to pay you a visit--so I wouldn't worry too much.

The important thing is that you learned the truth before losing your money.

Hello!!

I've got the same mail! Laura, Anthony and a daughter who will be 5. Them "made" mistake in first e-mail and they wrote she'll be 4 in 3 weeks. So, be afraid of anthony and laura!

Hi All,

Sorry this is a long post but I need to get this out there.

My girlfriend has also received this from www.aupair.com. She sent me the emails that she has been sending and receiving with the 'Tilisch' family and having read them I had a very bad feeling about it. She was asking legitimate questions as she has never been abroad and doesn't know anyone in the US and obviously a bit scared about taking the big step of working abroad and the responses she was getting were quite rude and very pushy about her sending information and then saying she would need to send money for visa and travel documents. It was thanks to this thread appearing on google that we found out it is a scam.

She has also been in communication with another 'family' in the past few days, again from www.aupair.com. Again she forwarded all the details so I could check it out. It's from a doctor in London which I know to be a scam and want to make people aware about it. I live in London and have been for over 20 years so know it very well. The doctor claims he works in London Bridge Hospital, everybody in London knows that the hospital is called Guy's hospital and is famous (this was the first alarm bell). The second alarm bell was that he is offering £4,500 a month salary plus £250 a week pocket money. At first I thought it might be a typo as that is equivalent of a director's salary for a company (I know this as I work in accounts). Obviously for a British citizen, straight away you know something isn't right about this but to an unsuspecting person in another country who doesn't know what it';s really like here in the UK they will think what a great salary. I googled the name of the 'doctor' and up popped other ads in different countries saying the same thing about needing an au pair for the same salary. I then googled the phone number which is provided in the emails and up pops even more ads saying the same thing but the difference here is each ad has a different name of person advertising and different email address. Straight away I told my girlfriend to stop communication as it is a scam.

Here are the details you should look out for:
Kavaley Leighton Anderson
His phone no: +447024042615
His address: Flat 11b 66 Clap ham Common South Side, London SW4 DTW, UK
He is working in London Bridge Hospital as a medical doctor in health departement.
He have 2 son names John n Johan.
His wife already pass away.
You daily job is to bring the kids up from bed to get them ready for school.
I will get paid 4500Pounds per month and a weekly allowance of 250pounds you will get.
He will pay for all my travel and i only need to do is to get the job contract agreement letter mean need to pay $100 for latter agreement by western union

I am beginning to wonder if www.aupair.com is a safe website, does anyone have any experience with this website as I am starting to worry about what could happen to my girlfriend.

Welcome Mark,

I'm glad you caught on to the scam before you girlfriend ended up losing money.

The website itself is legitimate, but like any classified advertising type of site, it is absolutely flooded with scammers. Unfortunately, even sites that aggressively remove scam ads when they are reported are full of scam activity, as scammers are used to having their accounts closed, and are very quick to open new accounts under new bogus names.

I'm not sure what country your girlfriend is from, but she needs to be aware of some key regulations regarding au pairs. For example, lots of scammers target people from the Philippines--but UK is actually very restrictive with au pair visas, and you have to be from specific countries to qualify. Philippines isn't one of those countries--so every single offer from UK sent to a job-seeker in Philippines is automatically a scam.

Au pairs in the US can only be sponsored by an agency on the US government published list. There is also required training, and there are restrictions related to work hours, age of children, and other things. If your girlfriend wants to work in the US, she would probably be better off contacting the agencies directly to learn about the process. If she is sent to an agent as part of an offer, she needs to verify that (a) the agency is on the list, and (b) all contact information for that agency matches what the US government has listed. She should never contact an agency at an email address or phone number sent to her in an email by a prospective family, and if she is called or emailed by them, she should contact the real agency using the contact information provided by the US government to verify that she is in contact with the real agency.