Translator scam alert reports
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Revision as of 13:43, 7 March 2012 by Enrique Cavalitto (Talk | contribs)
Contents |
Overview
- This is a service provided by ProZ.com to help professional translators improve their risk management when facing scammers.
- This page presents the translators scam alert reports sent to subscribers to the Translators scam-prevention center.
- If you are a ProZ.com member you can subscribe to the scam alerts.
Scam alerts
- Ghost client scam:
- Impersonated client scam: 2/28/2012, 3/5/2012, 3/6/2012
- Nigerian scam: 3/2/2012
- Advance payment / overpayment scam: 2/25/2012, 2/29/2012, 3/5/2012
- Pay-to-work scams: 2/27/2012
- Secret Shopper / Western Union testing scam: 2/24/2012
- "Wallet lost abroad" scam: 3/1/2012
- "Employment abroad" scam:
- Dating scam: 2/26/2012
- Phishing "data verification" scam:
March 2012
March 7, 2012
A variant of the "wallet stolen abroad" scam where the need is due to a medical emergency was reported by the alleged sender of the distress
message, sent from her hacked msn account.
Hi All, Hope all is well. I've have spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday here in Madrid,I had a trip to Madrid (SPAIN) to be with my ill Cousin,whom is a student here.I'm writing this with sadness right now,cuz am facing a terrible situation right now. She was admitted because she had an impaired vision on the left-hand side of her eye. So we assumed that this was migraine (without the headache), which we taught was her normal sickness, and would disappear in around half an hour. It didn't. It continued all day and was still there when she woke up on Thursday, though slightly improved. So we took her to the doc who suspected a stroke and sent her straight off to Acute Stroke Assessment Unit. Nothing showed up on the CT scan, luckily, and they discharged her with a bag of drugs.. I am deeply sorry for not writing or calling you before leaving, the news of her illness arrived to me as an emergency and that she needs family support to keep her going, I hope you understand my plight and pardon me. So I want to transfer her back home to have the surgery implemented with my Doc,the cost of the surgery here is very expensive, and again i need to monitor her while she's in town with me.So i was wondering if you can help me out monetarily,what i was looking for was about €2,600 to make the necessary arrangement but right now i have raised €1450 from my family.I traveled with little money due to the short time I had to prepare for this trip and never expected things to be the way it is right now,please what am looking for right now is €1150 and i will be so glad if you can help me and I'll surely pay you back upon return, I need to get her home ASAP because she is going through a lot of pain at the moment and the doctor have advised that it is necessary that the tumor is operated soon to avoid anything from going wrong. I'll reimburse you upon my return. kindly let me know if you can be of any help ? Love,
In order to prevent your accounts from being stolen you should change passwords frequently and be specially careful when using the account in a
shared platform (such as an Internet cafe computer). Passwords should not be stored in unencrypted text files in your computer and the antivirus
should be active and updated.
Learn more about this kind of scams at http://www.proz.com/about/translator-scam-alerts/#wallet_lost_abroad_scam
March 6, 2012
A ProZ.com member contacted Support to report that she completed a job for an agency and then, after delivery, the project manager stopped answering
her emails and disappeared. Looking into the case, the alleged representative from the agency performed all communications with the translator from
the email address [email protected]
The "contact" tab in the web page corresponding to the agency includes the following email addresses for communication:
- For general information: [email protected]{agency_name}.com
- For submitting résumés: [email protected]{agency_name}.com
This strongly suggests that the translator has been victim of a scam by impersonation as described at http://www.proz.com/about/translator-scam-alerts/default#impersonated_client_scam
The first risk management action to perform when offered a job from a new client is to positively identify this client. No honest client will be
offended if you do your professional homework.
March 5, 2012
Scammer contacted victim from a @rambler.ru email address claiming to be representatives of a legitimate company called Rambler Internet Holdings.
After performing several small editing jobs, the victim found out that Rambler is a common search engine and email provider like Google, and
ramble.ru is an email address that anyone can get. The "jobs" were often "letters" to their US employees praising their work and telling them about
the thousands of dollars in commissions they were racking up (the bait).
After about a week and a half (a few days before they would have had to pay the victim) they lowered the hook. They offered him one of those jobs
receiving payments from their US customers, hoping that his greed would have been piqued by the huge sums mentioned in the editing "jobs". The
victim politely told them that he was not interested (as he was beginning to suspect that this was just a money laundering scheme) and he has not
heard from them since.
A report from another victim published at http://wordsmithforhire.blogspot.com/2011/08/rambler-internet-holdings-scam.html hints at an overpayment
scam, so this is a case that combines impersonation of a legitimate company and advance payment.
March 2, 2012
A member reported receiving the following message from a ProZ.com profile (removed immediately after receiving the report):
"Hello Dear, How are you today? I hope by the special grace of God you are doing wonderfully well! I will like to apologize for contacting you in this manner over a transaction of this magnitude since we all know that the internet is not a safe means of communication but it was due to a matter of necessity, i had to do a thorough search on the internet and finally came across your email. I will rather start by introducing myself, I am Mrs. Olga Patarkatsishvili, the wife of late multimillionaire Badri Patarkatsishvili, he was found dead at about 10.45 pm, Tuesday February 12, 2008 at our Surrey mansion in United Kingdom, at the age of 52, a month after running unsuccessfully for the Georgian presidency.My husband was one of the "oligarchs" who made a fortune from the privatization of state-owned industries during the Yeltsin era and eventually found a haven in Britain, where he was recently linked to a possible bid for West Ham football club. My marriage to Badri came as a surprise. http://www.geotimes.ge/index.php?m=home&newsid=11794 I hope after reading through the above websites, you will see that me and my little son is in a very tough and difficult situation, as we are currently battling with my husband's wife, business partners, Georgian authorities, cousin and his solicitors over his wealth because he did not leave any will behind, this has made life so frustrating for me and my little son David. Everything he left for us secretly which includes, banks accounts (both foreign accounts) and properties were confiscated except for a profiling cash amount of Ten million eight hundred thousand United States dollars that he deposited as diplomatic baggage with a European firm shortly before he died. I have all documents relating to these deposit and every other information to proof my legitimacy, this I will definitely sent to you only once you prove to me that you are genuine, honest, transparent and dedicated to help us. We want you to stand as a beneficiary to retrieve the above quoted sum as my representative. Please Do email with these [email protected] for more details many thanks. Thanks for your understanding. Remain blessed, Mrs. Olga Patarkatsishvili"
This is a classic "Nigerian scam" and, according to law enforcement agencies, lots of educated people fall for this kind of trap every year. IP
address 41.218.247.151 tells us that the scam was sent from Accra, Ghana.
Learn more about this kind of scams at http://www.proz.com/about/translator-scam-alerts/default#nigerian_scam
March 1, 2012
A ProZ.com member reported receiving the following message, allegedly from a colleague, sent from that colleague's email address:
"Hope you get this on time,sorry I didn't inform you about my trip in Spain for a Program, I'm presently in Spain and am having some difficulties here because i misplaced my wallet on my way to the hotel where my money and other valuable things were kept. presently i have limited access to internet,I will like you to assist me with a loan of 2,950 Euro to sort-out my hotel bills and to get myself back home. i have spoken to the embassy here but they are not responding to the matter effectively,I will appreciate whatever you can afford to assist me with,I'll Refund the money back to you as soon as i return,let me know if you can be of any help.I don't have a phone where i can be reached. Please let me know immediately. Best Regards"
This is a classic ""Wallet lost abroad" scam, where the scammers first capture somebody's email account and then use it to scam others (probably
taken from the email contacts list). IP address was not reported in this case but it is likely to be located outside Spain.
Learn more about this kind of scams at http://www.proz.com/about/translator-scam-alerts/default#wallet_lost_abroad_scam
February 2012
February 29, 2012
Several ProZ.com members reported via Support the following scam submitter from two profiles that were deleted as soon as the first reports were received: hello I am pastor rick zebb from leeds, UK.I will need the service of an English to french Interpreter while i will becoming to grace a wedding ceremony in france(paris) as the SpecialGuest Speaker of the occasion on the Friday 23th and Saturday24 of march 2012.The duration will be from 2pm-4pm on Friday and 10am-12pm on Saturday. If available for these days and hours, do not hesitate to get back to me with the fee involved so i work towards booking the space. Very Best Regards rick zebb 447011149073 [email protected] This is the classic "bishop" version of the advance payment scam. Please note the poor level of English for pastor residing in Leeds. The IP address was 41.184.17.29 and it traces the sender to Lagos (Nigeria) instead of Leeds (UK). This very simple risk management verification is enough to protect you in this case. Lear more about this kind of scams at http://www.proz.com/about/translator-scam-alerts/default#advance_payment_overpayment_scam
February 28, 2012
Kamran Nadeem, the Operational Manager at www.industranslation.com has contacted ProZ.com to report that scammers are misusing his name and profile to cheat translators. To do so scammers have created an email address [email protected] and use it to contact translators, impersonating Kamran and sending them to Indus Translation Services' blueboard http://www.proz.com/blueboard/7728 Translators are offered jobs at good rates and, after delivery, they are not paid and their emails are no longer answered. Apparently at least six translators have been cheated this way. The IP information in the mails received from the scammers locate them in China and further investigations suggest that they could be linked to http://www.proz.com/blueboard/11110 This is a clasic example of scammers who steal translations by impersonating a legitimate ourtsourcer. As usual, the main line of defense for translators is a solid risk management procedure, and in particular to get a positive identification of the outsourcer. Two details should warn translators in this case: * Emails allegedly sent by a corporate outsourcer from a free email account (Gmail in this case) should always ring alarms. * IP addresses of the scammers located them in China while the company is based in the USA. IP addresses of mails from new people contacting us should be always checked, see http://wiki.proz.com/wiki/index.php/Risk_management:_Email for information on how to do it. Lear more about this kind of scams at http://www.proz.com/about/translator-scam-alerts/default#impersonated_client_scam
February 27, 2012
Earlier this month a ProZ.com member reported at http://www.proz.com/topic/217853 that an allegued translation agency based in Australia had offered her attractive work with the condition that they "accepted to cooperate only with WTACA verified members.” Then they added “WTACA is an international Organization focusing on translation certifications, for more details you can visit their web site www.wtaca.eu.tc” and they requested scanned copy of the translator’s WTACA membership as requirement for incorporation into the agency’s database. Admission onto WTACA costed €100 so this has all the look and feel of a classic “pay to work” scam, where the victim is asked to pay first as condition for getting access to an attractive job offer. Further investigation showed that several of the “agency” contact addresses belonged to real translators who were unaware of this misuse of their data. Later the web pages corresponding to both "agency" and "association" became inactive. Now another ProZ.com member reported at http://www.proz.com/topic/219194 that an allegued Australian agency contacted her indicating that "To ensure high quality translation, we only accept STO ( Successful Translators Organization) certified Member. we invite you to visit their website www.sto.eu5.org” The “agency” presents a PO box as contact address, while the association shows no contact information at all. Admission fee into the STO association is casually €100. At this point the risk management evaluation lights a big red alarm indication. Learn more about this kind of scams at http://www.proz.com/about/translator-scam-alerts/default#pay_to_work_scams
February 26, 2012
The following email was reported by a ProZ.com member through support: ***** Hello My Dearest one Hello My Dearest onernMy name is Sandra Williams i saw your Email today, when i was browsing i then made up my mind to contact you as my friend so i will also like you to reply back to me, i have some thing to discuss with you, i will also send you my picture,s and for us to know each other very well, I believe that distance can never be a barrier but let's love connect us because love is a bridge that connected far distance to be close to each other it will be my pleasure to hear from you soonestrnFrom Sandra,please reply me with this email, [email protected] ***** This is a classic example of dating scam, where the scammer attempts to establish a relationship with the victim to ask for the transfer of money once this was achieved. The profile used for sending this message was deleted and the corresponding email address was blocked. Read more about this scam at http://www.proz.com/about/translator-scam-alerts/#dating_scam
February 25, 2012
A ProZ.com user wrote in a support request: "I received a false request from a scammer and fell for it (see copy of the scam email below). Please
notify all your members about this scam as many other translators might fall for it.
Greetings! I'm Alan Cox from Atlanta,Georgia and i'll be leaving here in Atlanta for the United Kingdom on a business trip tomorrow.However,i will need your service to translate some documents for me.I need to make a presentation to some groups of german speaking people in Munich,Germany on 5th of March,2012.I will need you to help me translate the papers from English to German,so each of my audience can have a copy in german language and they can follow through.I will also need that the work be delivered by March 2,2012.Please,let me know your rate for a total of about 4626 words presentation and your methods of payment.I look forward to hearing back from you soon. Best Regards, Alan
This is a classic text found in advance payment scams, including the poor writting and the fact that the translation will be used to be given to
the assistants to a presentation.
Read more about this scam at http://www.proz.com/about/translator-scam-alerts/default#advance_payment_overpayment_scam
February 24, 2012
The "Secret Shopper" scam has been going strong for the past few months and continues to affect translators. Please help spread the word in the
interest of protecting other language professionals who may fall victim.
A ProZ.com user reported today via the Support service: "I was contacted by a Tom Baker, from a company called Secret Shopper, claiming to be a
Proz.com member, ... with a job involving the evaluation of Western Union Services in France. The transactions I carried out were by means of
travellers cheques which my bank now informs me are fakes, and of course it is impossible to contact this company. I have been defrauded of 4000 €."
Read more about this scam at http://www.proz.com/about/translator-scam-alerts/default#secret_shopper_western_union_testing_scam
Discussion related to this article
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