HistoryGal
As some of you might know, I dabble on a lot of sites on the big world wide web. I do surveys, write a few academic essay type article for students, perform some short tasks on a few microtasks sites and I also work as a part-time translator mostly in the medical field because after all I was a registered nurse for 21 years. As a medical translator, I have registered to a few free translator sites such as Translatorbase, Pro-Z, Babelcube and Translators cafe.
Last Monday on the 19th of September, I received an email from (I am not going to mention the name because I am now almost sure that it was fake) a female stating that she had seen my profile on translators cafe and wanted to hire me to translate a 10 page document within 15 days. I, of course accepted and told her my fee and then happily started to translate the document. I also started looking for the company’s website, that the woman stated she worked with, and that site looks very legitimate and has a Facebook page etc. So I was ever so happy to be working.
On Wednesday the 21st of September, I received another email from another individual claiming to be from the financial department of the company that was supposedly hiring me. That email included a PDF printable cheque (with both front and back portions). So I was really happy to have seen that I was going to be paid after all.
But lo and behold, the cheque was for twice the amount that we had agreed upon. The instructions included with the cheque explained that I was to deposit the cheque through my bank mobile app (which I do have), and then send the extra money, through Western Union no less, to a supposed publisher for the 10 page publication.
Well, let me tell you, I started swearing my head off. Who do they think they are dealing with? I was not born yesterday. I know that that cheque has no funds with it. They just want to take the little bit of money that I have and also deal with the fee for depositing a cheque with no funds attached to it.
But after all, just in case they are legitimate, I replied stating that I “respectfully decline to take on the responsability of sending money through Western Union because it is not in my translator’s real work related tasks”. How is that for being polite?
But I am still seething mad.
By the way, do any of you know how and where and when I should report these persons to the authorities.? Just a question. Answer if you can.
We have to be very careful. There are more and more fraudsters online.
Yes I agree and they are getting better and better at their fraud.
Those scammers must be from Nigeria. They’re the ones who ask for deposit and the use of western union. At times when I receive their emails, I play along with them till they give up.
I have strung them along too and then I laughed my head off after they give up on me but it is weird that they did not delete their email address because a few days after I emailed them and asked them “what you did not like my answer and me anymore” or something like that. Guess what, no answer to that one. Thank you for reassuring me about you doing the same thing I do. Thanks for reading and commenting and up voting.
I know how you would have felt. There are many scams in the online world.
Yes I agree and I certainly hope you never fell for one. Thank you for your visit, your reading, your comment and especially thank you for all your recent up votes on some of my articles.
Scammers are getting more creative every day! Glad to hear that you were cautious!
Yes, I am glad I was aware of what they were trying to do. They completely stopped harassing me with emails after i rejected their offer of deposit. Ha Ha on them.
Essentially you are dealing with fraud, so you could file a report on them with the police. Unless they’re out of state and then you’d have to try to get the FBI involved. I seriously doubt they’d be interested in going after such a small sum, but it is up to you…
Someone tried a similar thing with me once, I just tossed the check and never wrote them back
I printed the check but never deposited it. I was tempted to let the authorities know but, like you mentioned, it was for such a low amount, I never bothered. But at least I did not lose a dime over it….
Less what you spent on the ink and paper, you mean. That was probably around a dime…
Scam is everywhere nowadays. That could be online or within the society we lived in. The ability of discernment which is which is strongly needed.
Thank you for your comment Cassy. It is very appropriate and I wish I could discern everything that needs to be analysed and dissected to discern whether it is good or bad. But at least I managed to not being scammed by those people. Thank you again.
Glad you got ahead of this scam. We have to be so careful.
Sorry about the delay in answering and liking your comment. Somehow I never got the message from Virily that you saw and commented on my post. I agree entirely with you. We all have to be very careful in this day and age. I am also very glad that I saw that scam for what it really was: a very bad concoction scam.
nice
WOW Amazing bro.
Nice Interesting post.
Sorry about the delay in thanking you for viewing and commenting (twice) on my little but very disturbing (for me anyway) little post.
Hmm. That’s a new modus. Good thing, you got your internal scam alarm on. Hehehe.
If they are using Gmail, yahoo or other free email services maybe you could file a report to the administrator. Problem with this situation is tracing the source of the email is quite difficult.
Actually I have already written a review on google concerning the company that they claimed to be working for. Even the company’s website has no email contact. And I have traced the female’s IP address, but is it for real or just a whiz of electronics, bypass and repositioning? Anyway, I am done with them. And if they come after me for a breach of a non existing contract, because the only thing I said at the beginning was the fact that I was interested in doing the project for a certain price only (certainly not including the Western Union thing), just watch out…. He He
True.
These days, anybody can easily cover their tracks with open VPN services out there.
Well, I am afraid I do not know what a VPN is but I will look it up. Maybe I can learn something to help make sure they so not try to scam anybody else again. By the way, thank you for looking over my little post.
a Virtual Private Network will disguise the IP address of the machine used to send the email, as would NATing. But with DHCP, it is pretty difficult to track addresses anyway. If the email contained the MAC address of the sender, that is a unique identifier. Sure, the MAC address can be spoofed but that’s pretty difficult to do…
Believe me, my email in-box is filled with likewise stuff, every now and then you’ve mind blowing offers and out of this world kind of ideas to earn hundreds of, thousands of dollars over night or in one-week-time but their outcome – absolutely waste of time, energy and money!
I agree. There are a lot of get rich schemes on the big old world wide world net. But luckily they did not catch me in it.
Good for you! if it feels too good to be true, it probably is!
1. Depending on what country you are in, search via google or other search engines the term “report financial scam” in the search window.
2. It is to report this as a scam regarding money. Sadly becuase you didn’t actually fall prey there is less they can do.
Good job catching that one!
Thank you very much. They are still emailing me to make sure that I deposited the money but I am answering them any more.