Larry Romanoff
- 2006-05-14
Dear Linda;
The experience you related is actually a common hoax, but I have never heard of it applied to teaching English. It's usually perpetrated on sales websites like ebay or craigslist. Here is how it usually works:
You list something for sale at a price of $2,000. A buyer pops up who is happy to pay your price, no questions asked. So you're happy.
For payment, the buyer says he has someone who owes him $10,000; this person could be in your country or any other country. The buyer says this other person will send you a cashier's cheque for $10,000. When you receive the money, you are to deposit it in your bank account, keep the $2,000 for yourself and send the remaining $8,000 by Western Union to the buyer.
He always has some story about how it is more convenient or more tax-free for the money to flow through you.
Usually, the person puts a lot of pressure on you to wire that money to him as soon as the cheque arrives, and of course that is because the cheque won't clear.
All of the auction and sale websites have prominent warnings about this scam. Many people have been taken in by this one. You did the wise thing by waiting for the cheque to clear.
Hello to all private tutors operating in Canada:
I posted an ad a couple of months ago. It seemed reasonable when I received replies. I thought, "wow, it works!". Well, I suppose the need to believe that people are who they say they are and the fact that they were willing to advance money for the tutoring of their "teenagers" who would be crossing over the Atlantic to learn English in Canada had my hopes up that I would be earning decent money this coming Summer.
It was a hoax! I almost fell for it until the alleged "cashier's cheque" came in the mail. Yes, I stupidly gave out my personal info (mailing address and name) and got this almost reasonably authentic looking cheque in the mail. They had almost convinced me that the cheque came from the business client of the father of the teenager. He owed some money to them and sent the whole amount to me. I was to take the agreed-upon fee and send the rest back to the family accountant in the U.K. even though the family was from Belgium or Germany.My bank profited on the U.S.-Canadian currency conversion. I'm still fighting with them over that because I alerted the teller to the possible fraud but that I was not involved in any criminal way. I didn't feel it was a good idea to send real money to them until the money cleared my bank. Of course, it didn't.
The alleged names of one of the parents are "Janet Johnson" and another one was "Jonathan Blake". I wasn't surprised by the woman's english name. Perhaps she took her husband's last name in marriage. I was surprised by the apparent english name of Blake. When I told them by email that I would wait to see if the cheque cleared as part of a security precaution, I didn't hear from them after that.
So... please don't be taken in as I almost was. I suppose the desire to earn good money from a couple of contracts like this blinded me from the risks involved.
Please do not reply to the above-mentioned names or just say, you already have more than enough work! I just feel awful about this but have to chalk it up to experience. By the way, once the first cheque came back fradulent, the "Jonathan Blake" parent has not been in further contact with me either. He even wanted to scam me for more than a couple of thousands.
I hope I've warned my fellow Canadians in time. Yes, I was a dope in retrospect but I woke up in time to realize that if it seems too good to be true, then it probably is!
I wish you all the best of luck in your tutoring efforts but you may want to keep it more local.