"Interpreter required" email - bet this is scam (Germany) Thread poster: Manuela Hoffmann-Maleki (X)
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Manuela Hoffmann-Maleki (X) 
Germany
Local time: 16:59
English to German
+ ...
Hello,
today I received an email which very much reminds me of one I had last year and turned out to be scam. Here it is, I don't give the entire name so as not to have problems with libel in case I am wrong but anyone receiving this email will nevertheless recognize it. It was directed to "undisclosed recipients", sent from an address at att.net via yahoo.com, reply to msn.com.
'Hello,
My name is D... Carp...; I will be going on my annual le... See more Hello,
today I received an email which very much reminds me of one I had last year and turned out to be scam. Here it is, I don't give the entire name so as not to have problems with libel in case I am wrong but anyone receiving this email will nevertheless recognize it. It was directed to "undisclosed recipients", sent from an address at att.net via yahoo.com, reply to msn.com.
'Hello,
My name is D... Carp...; I will be going on my annual leave on the 4th of February & my wife and I, along with our 2 children will be coming to Germany on holiday for 7 days. We will be staying from Sunday 6th of February 2011 to Sunday 13th of February 2011. My wife who does not speak German, requires the services of an Interpreter/Translator (German-English) for 5hours per day for the duration of our stay. Your duties will be mainly to escort/guide her and our two children during shopping and sightseeing. We will be renting a car, so transportation will not be a problem.
If you are available to render your service, I would greatly appreciate it if you could advise the languages you specialize in and your coverage cities. Please let me know the total costs of your service for 5hours per day for 7days.
I'm 44 years old and a senior accountant, working with Alm... F.... L.... here in the United Kingdom. I look forward to hearing from you, have a great day and God bless.
Many thanks,
(name)
number, Belsize Road,
London, Postal Code
United Kingdom.
Tel: +indicated in full.'
No mention of ProZ.com was made, but there are of course other ways to find out translators' or interpreters' addresses.
Hope this message helps to prevent trouble.
Manuela ▲ Collapse
| | | | ibz
Local time: 16:59
Member (2007)
English to German
+ ...
Hi,
Yes, I got the same message, only that Mr. C.D. wanted to visit Zurich. You'll shortly receive another message saying that his original e-mail address doesn't work anymore and that you should reply to another address. It's a well-known scam - don't even bother to reply to it
Regards,
Irene
| | | | Manuela Hoffmann-Maleki (X)
Germany
Local time: 16:59
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Thanx, so it was also sent to other countries | Jan 21, 2011 |
Hi,
thank you very much, Irene - I definitely won't send any feedback to this address. Just wanted to warn, as last year when I received the first email of such a kind I took it for real (also received answers to my emails) and maybe others would do the same.
Manuela
| | | | | Highly likely to be a scam | Jan 21, 2011 |
I received the same message. The story is rather implausible and the phone number looks a bit fishy too.
In my view, the best option is to delete and ignore.
Paul Skidmore
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| I also got it last year and even bothered to issue a quotation... | Jan 21, 2011 |
I still can't make out a possible purpose other than comparing prices.
Thanks for posting!
Cheers,
Jan
| | | | | thanks for the warning | Jan 21, 2011 |
All good and fine, looks like a proper scam, all right.
I just fail to see the part generally taken as "send me your money". How does one loose/profit from that?
| | | | Manuela Hoffmann-Maleki (X)
Germany
Local time: 16:59
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Next step might be... - how to get rid of your money | Jan 21, 2011 |
Hi,
last year, with the similar mail, this was one of the next steps - where I got suspicious. First you send a quotation, then they say, the price is OK and announce they will pay in advance by cheque to your address. This is where I got aware and stopped the whole thing. The next thing would probably be, judging from what happened in other cases, they cancel the job and want you to wire the money to some bank account, and after you did that you realize the cheque was worth just th... See more Hi,
last year, with the similar mail, this was one of the next steps - where I got suspicious. First you send a quotation, then they say, the price is OK and announce they will pay in advance by cheque to your address. This is where I got aware and stopped the whole thing. The next thing would probably be, judging from what happened in other cases, they cancel the job and want you to wire the money to some bank account, and after you did that you realize the cheque was worth just the paper it was printed on and nothing else and you lost your money.
Regards,
Manuela ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Does it pay to them? | Jan 21, 2011 |
Now that most translators are aware of these fishy practices, does it pay to them to make all the effort of spamming us with these scams? How many hits do the manage to make? I bet they make less and less hits every year.
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Manuela Hoffmann-Maleki (X)
Germany
Local time: 16:59
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Lonesome wolves might get trapped | Jan 21, 2011 |
Hi,
not every translator/interpreter is organized in forums like this or even realizes that such an enquiry might be a fake! And cheating 1 or 3 of them, getting some 500 Euro out every time... Individuals sometimes even kill for much less than that. We also have no idea if this email was sent to 10 people or 10.000.
By the way, this was the response I received last year from the other cheater:
"am okay with the fee.i would have love to come down to pay yo... See more Hi,
not every translator/interpreter is organized in forums like this or even realizes that such an enquiry might be a fake! And cheating 1 or 3 of them, getting some 500 Euro out every time... Individuals sometimes even kill for much less than that. We also have no idea if this email was sent to 10 people or 10.000.
By the way, this was the response I received last year from the other cheater:
"am okay with the fee.i would have love to come down to pay you by cash, but its going to be stressful and time consuming so i will send you an international Bank Certified check that you can easily catch at your bank.in case you stay outside Bavaria Munich do calculate your Transportation .Do provide the below details for payment.
Name to be written on the check
Full address to send the check
Your phone number
kind regards"
Regards,
Manuela ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Definitely a scam | Jan 21, 2011 |
Hi everyone,
This is definitely a scam - it's also being widely discussed in a BDÜ forum I read this morning (in a thread that has been going on since last fall) - one translator there got trapped by this scam and is now trying to get her money back ...
Obviously, the famous Nigeria Connection is behind these e-mails, and they use different names/companies in their mails, always with the similar story of sb coming to visit.
My advice: Delete mails like that without both... See more Hi everyone,
This is definitely a scam - it's also being widely discussed in a BDÜ forum I read this morning (in a thread that has been going on since last fall) - one translator there got trapped by this scam and is now trying to get her money back ...
Obviously, the famous Nigeria Connection is behind these e-mails, and they use different names/companies in their mails, always with the similar story of sb coming to visit.
My advice: Delete mails like that without bothering to respond!
Regards,
Peggy ▲ Collapse
| | | | opolt
Germany
Local time: 16:59
English to German
+ ...
| Thanks Manuela | Jan 21, 2011 |
I have also received this one, in almost identical form (stating that he planned a stay in Berlin from 6th Feb to 13th Feb), and my "scam detector" immediately began to flash -- first, because it arrived at 4 am CET, second, because there are some slight non-British oddities wrt to his language, and third, because the company for which he claims to work as an accountant doesn't seem to exist at all.
So the only confirmation I needed was this Proz forum -- thanks everyone for the ale... See more I have also received this one, in almost identical form (stating that he planned a stay in Berlin from 6th Feb to 13th Feb), and my "scam detector" immediately began to flash -- first, because it arrived at 4 am CET, second, because there are some slight non-British oddities wrt to his language, and third, because the company for which he claims to work as an accountant doesn't seem to exist at all.
So the only confirmation I needed was this Proz forum -- thanks everyone for the alert! This saves me the effort of having to reply with an offer just to find out whether it's serious or not
(FWIW, in my case he sent this to an email address of mine which I haven't used on Proz and which he must have gotten somewhere else.)
[Edited at 2011-01-21 11:30 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | You'd be surprised | Jan 21, 2011 |
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
Now that most translators are aware of these fishy practices, does it pay to them to make all the effort of spamming us with these scams? How many hits do the manage to make? I bet they make less and less hits every year.
As the Americans say, "There's a sucker born every minute." Thanks to the magic of e-mail, scammers can send the same message to thousands of people every day. Even if only 0.01% of the recipients fall for it, any money they make is still profit for them. Unfortunately the only thing you can do is ignore the message and move on. They'll get their comeuppance eventually -- I hope.
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opolt
Germany
Local time: 16:59
English to German
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| Lucrative as long as email costs nothing | Jan 21, 2011 |
TransAfrique wrote: Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
Now that most translators are aware of these fishy practices, does it pay to them to make all the effort of spamming us with these scams? How many hits do the manage to make? I bet they make less and less hits every year. As the Americans say, "There's a sucker born every minute." Thanks to the magic of e-mail, scammers can send the same message to thousands of people every day. Even if only 0.01% of the recipients fall for it, any money they make is still profit for them. Unfortunately the only thing you can do is ignore the message and move on. They'll get their comeuppance eventually -- I hope.
That's correct. It's the combination of free email and the possibility of harvesting large numbers of email addresses automatically. -- That's why it has been proposed that every email message should cost, say, 1 cent (Euro or USD, doesn't matter). That would silence many of those scammers (not all of them, of course) and almost all spammers out there immediately.
Sadly, it won't happen. There will always be some providers who will offer email for free, so we'll have to live with all that c*** for some time to come.
But (in my own experience at least) some basic common sense is enough to filter out more than 99% of that stuff. Even though they are getting more sophisticated all the time, it's rather easy to tell them apart :-]
| | | | Laurent KRAULAND (X)
France
Local time: 16:59
French to German
+ ...
| Common sense | Jan 21, 2011 |
On the AMEX website and elsewhere, it is clearly stated that one should buy their Travellers' Cheques themselves (from a bank) and use them personally (physically, e. g. for paying an accommodation etc.)
Hence any anonymous offer with the mention of Travellers' Cheques as a means of payment is highly suspect.
| | | | Manuela Hoffmann-Maleki (X)
Germany
Local time: 16:59
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Additional information for German interpreters/translators | Feb 1, 2011 |
As a follow-up to the findings in this thread, I would like to add - for those who speak German - that on zahlungspraxis.de this same person has been discussed in detail at the same time as we here tried to figure out why someone is doing this and how it works. I think it might be useful for all who still need further information to look at the thread under the heading of "INTERPRETER REQUIRED (fwd)".
(You need to have an account to view the information, but creating this account is... See more As a follow-up to the findings in this thread, I would like to add - for those who speak German - that on zahlungspraxis.de this same person has been discussed in detail at the same time as we here tried to figure out why someone is doing this and how it works. I think it might be useful for all who still need further information to look at the thread under the heading of "INTERPRETER REQUIRED (fwd)".
(You need to have an account to view the information, but creating this account is free, and the information you can obtain there is sometimes really interesting).
[Bearbeitet am 2011-02-01 09:19 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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