A True Gem: Translator Scammers Website

Scammers have been around for a long, long time, and it's nothing new that they have been targeting translators by using a variety of methods, including posing as clients and requesting your bank information only to wire you too much money and asking you to wire part of it back. Then, of course, you find out that the original money that had been sent to you was drawn on a closed account. This is a very well-documented scam and a disturbing one indeed. 

The second main scam revolves around stealing actual translators' information and trying to "sell" fictitious translation services to unsuspecting clients using the real translator's information and credentials, etc. We even heard from a translator colleague who received an e-mail from a scammer who was offering his translation services, and turns out he had attached our colleague's CV to the e-mail! The way that particular scam works is that "translators" request work from unsuspecting clients, ask for payment in advance, and either take off with the money and don't perform any work or deliver a Google translation, etc. And of course the real translator's information is being used and abused, which is quite terrible. One way to prevent scammers from stealing your CV is to always make it available in PDF format rather than Word or any other editable format.

You get the idea, right? Photo by Chris Floros.

Now, hundreds of blog posts and articles in every corner of the world have been written about the variety of ways that translators get ripped off by scammers. The American Translators Association has published detailed information about this important topic, which you can read here and here. However, we recently heard about a colleague who fell for one of the oldests scams (the overpayment scam). With every business transaction, you need to use your common sense and your business skills to get a feel for the potential customer. Issue a formal price quote and have the customer sign it. Don't let anyone rush you. Ask for pre-payment via PayPal (or other secure method) if you have any doubt that the person is a legitimate customer. Of course it's difficult to know if anything is a scam until after you get scammed, but translators are smart people, so at the danger of repeating what's already been said many times, here are some red flags:

• The potential client writes from a Gmail address, yet claims to be a professor or other distinguished person. We personally don't do business with folks who have free e-mail addresses, unless they want a birth certificate or similar document translated, in which case we ask for payment in advance.
• The "client" seems very eager to get started with the project and is quite pushy and even insists on providing payment ahead of time, as long as you give him/her your bank information. Now, for anyone who's been in the industry for more than a week, it should be surprising that a client is so eager to pay. And handing out your bank information to strangers is just a no-no: that's what PayPal (or similar services) are for. Of course, in Europe, bank transfers are very common, and you could protect yourself by waiting a week or two to see if they payment has indeed cleared. Of course, no real client would overpay you and ask you to wire money back, so you should be on high alert if that ever happens.
• Many times, the writer will claim that he or she is going to a conference in ________ and is giving a workshop, so that's why they need a translation of their original article (attached) into ______. Of course, the obvious question is: If the sender doesn't speak the language he/she wants the translation in, how will he/she present at the conference in a foreign language? In addition, if you take the first four lines of the attached article (be careful with opening attachments from unknown sources!), you quickly realize that the article is from Wikipedia or some other source. It's usually verbatim.
• These scammer messages are riddled with grammatical and spelling errors and the sender oftentimes resides in Pakistan, Kenya, Nigeria, etc. 

We don't want to sound unsympathetic, but any translator who gets scammed at this point perhaps did not do enough due diligence. Information about translator scams is widely available, and information is power. Add common sense and some business skills, and no translator should get scammed. 

Finally, one translator colleague, J. Roque Dias, a Portuguese translator, has gone to the trouble of putting together an entire website dedicated to this. Thank you so much, J. Roque! What a great service to the community. Please have a look at the very complete Translator Scammers website. J. Roque focuses only on the very disturbing scam trend of stealing real translators' information, and he's providing a tremendous public service here.

Sounds Fishy

A few days ago, a potential client contacted us with a personal document that had to be translated for immigration purposes. Even though these certified and notarized translations can be quite painful and time-consuming, we accept them occasionally, especially when people need them for immigration purposes (Judy has been through that difficult process). 

As usual, we asked the client, who had given her name, Lucrecia,(we made this up; not her real name) to send us the document, which she said she'd do right after she returned home. She promptly did, but as soon as we opened the document, we knew that something was off. The client claimed the letter was from a Swiss nursing home (we made this up, too, to protect the client's privacy), but it was a very unusual Word document. Official entities in the German-speaking world rarely issue official correspondence via e-mail, and when they do, it's always in the highly inconvenient PDF format. That was our first red flag. Here are the others:

• A spelling mistake (the name of the month) on the first line
• Multiple references to a person's name, but the second reference did not match the first 
• No signature
• The offiicial who supposedly wrote the letter did not include his title (he's probably a doctor), which is unheard of in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. They love their titles.
• The letterhead looked unofficial, too. We did a quick web search, found the nursing home, and realized that the images had been taken directly from the website.
• We were really suspicious at this point. We checked the properties section under Word, which lets you see who authored and who edited the document. Sure enough, the document had been created the same evening -- by our potential client.
• The potential client used the name Lucrecia to identify herself on the phone, but in all e-mail correspondence, which came from a very generic address, she used the name Eulalia (we made this up, too).

We spoke with our pro bono lawyer, Judy's hubby, who was unsure about what sort of fraudulent activities were underfoot. However, he did tell us to stay away from the translation, which had been our first instinct as well. It was relatively evident to us that someone was trying to defraud someone, and we certainly don't want to be an accessory in a crime or be involved in aiding and abetting a criminal activity.We e-mailed the client back and told her, in general terms, that we did not think the letter was an original document and that we could thus not translate it. We don't every want to wrongly accuse anyone of fraud (and we did not), but we think we did the right thing here. Again, we are not sure what the potential client was trying to do, but we are glad we ran for the hills. 

What would you have done, dear readers?

Sounds Fishy: Chinese Textile Company

Our friend Jennifer Horne recently sent us this information about a fishy-sounding translation project. We are happy to post it here to share it with colleagues who might have been contacted by this particular person as well.  Of course, one usually doesn't know for sure if the project is a scam until one has actually  been scammed. However, this project surely is full of red flags. 


Does this one sound familiar? If yes, does anyone know how the scam works? Is it one of those where the "client" sends you a fraudulent check? Here is the e-mail we received from Jen.

I know how you are about keeping track on scams and I wanted to share this with you in case you want to share it on your blog.

This job was for a Chinese textile company. The emails with them were very fishy. They were extremely agreeable (possibly a little too agreeable) to all of my rates, and even my travel day fee! I felt as though they were being quite pushy to get me to book the days (they said they would need me for 5 days). 

They were not cooperating with me so I can find out some basic information. I kept asking them to call me so I can ask them some questions before I send my official quote just so I know more about what I'd be getting myself into (type of event, who the other interpreter is, who THEY even are in regards to the Chinese company who is the client...) and they never called. I had no way of calling them of course.

One day I get an email from "Robin" and the next day it's from "Robert". Their email address is from a yahoo address... 

Then after typing the company name+scam I found tons of pages. Here is one.

Oddball Scam

The e-mail that we received this week has scam written all over it.  The tell-tale signs include the Hotmail address of the sender, lack of e-mail signature, vague details about the actual project, grammar and punctuation mistakes, etc. We saw the red flags immediately, including some funny stuff, like the sender wanting us to print, bind and deliver thousands of pamphlets to Germany -- hilarious, right? Here's the e-mail:

Hello,

My name is Charles B whittaker, an executive Managing Director and the Western Region Leader at Frank Crystal & Company. I got a contract, in which I am needing help in translation. The project is about translating the attached document I sent you to a Germany language, print them out in thousands of copies, bind them in form of pamphlets and to deliver them to our company in Germany.  I will need your help in the translation. Please, let me know how this will work out, and email me the total price we are paying you for the translation. I want you to know as well, we are needing the assignment done on or before August 20th. I attached the document, sent to you in MS and PDF files. Please, kindly acknowledge my proposal, and get back to me as soon as possible. 

Sincerely, Charles.

We dug a bit deeper. The company Charles claims to work for, Frank Crystal & Company, does indeed exist, and we bet they are not happy that their company name is being used in this way. They are an important insurance brokerage firm in the U.S. While one can never be 100% sure that a scam is a scam until one has actually been scammed, we'll go out on a limb (not really) and say this is a scam. However, how is it a scam? Is it the classic scam where they will assign the project, offer to pay ahead of time, then send too much money and ask for us to wire the difference back (that's an old one, and turns out the initial wire was not legit)?

We took a quick look at the attachment (always dangerous), and a Google search with the first paragraph of the text yielded what we expected: the text was taken, verbatim, from this website.  It is crystal-clear to us that this is a hilarious scam, but we are puzzled as to how this scam could potentially work for the scammers.

Any ideas, readers? Have you heard about this one? We'd love to hear from you.

Scam Alert: Omarion Desmond

It's quite a troubling trend that online scams are increasingly targeting our industry, as scammers (mostly incorrectly) assume that linguists work in a vacuum or are not very tech-savvy (another incorrect assumption). Luckily, we have forums like these, in addition to outstanding payment practices lists and black lists, to share information and to educate each other. This month's scam alert comes from our dear colleague and fellow author Cora Bastiaansen of the Netherlands, whom we had the pleasure of meeting at a conference in Utrecht earlier this year. Here's her story in her own words. It is a scam that has been making the rounds in the U.S. and that was the subject of an article in the ATA Chronicle earlier this year:

On November 26, I received an inquiry regarding a large translation job through www.gotranslators.com. Since the gentleman who needed the translation service did not seem to work for a properly registered company, I asked him for some kind of guarantee. He understood my reservations and suggested sending me a check as a deposit.  In addition, he promised me a second assignment at a later point. I was happy and reassured and I waited for part of the 1600 euros, the amount of the first job. His confidence in me must have been enormous, for he sent me a check of 5000 euros, which was, according to him, payment for both jobs, including the costs for cashing the check. Such a decent fellow!

When the check arrived, I was somewhat surprised: so much money, a check from a German bank, an envelope sent from Russia, and no note or letter accompanying it.

I was reluctant to cash the check -- it's almost like I knew something was up. However, keeping it in the house did not feel good either, so I deposited the money into my bank account a few days later.

I received e-mails from the client every day, pushing me to cash the check and asking me about the progress of the translation, which I had not yet started (was that my gut feeling?).

On December 14, I received a message from www.gotranslators.com warning its members of scams. I checked out the black list on their website and found my client's name among the swindlers, most of whom were from Russia (the stamp!).

Then I received another e-mail: the "client" claimed he had acted too fast and his boss had vetoed the second part of the translation. He asked me to send back part of the money via Western Union as soon as possible.

However, the money in my account is not quite mine yet: it is an advance payment from the bank while they wait for the funds to clear.  But I could have accessed the funds, and I would have been able to withdraw the money that my "client" was asking for and send it to him through Western Union. And later, when it would appear that the check that my "client" gave me was a fake, I'd lose a significant amount of money because the bank would immediately reverse the whole 5,000 that they had tentatively authorized. Thanks to GoTranslators' moderators, I made no such Western Union transfer and I did not lose any money. What a relief!  I just contacted my bank, told them about the scam, and I am now waiting for their advice. To be continued...

This is the scammer's original posting:

Sender : Omarion Desmond (omoode1@gmail.com)

Subject : GoTranslators - TRANSLATOR SERVICE NEEDED.

Dear Translator, I have a 20,000 words on to be translated from English to Dutch. Let me know if you are available and how much it is going to cost. Regards, Omarion Desmond.

The lesson: if it's too good to be true, it probably is. We don't get a lot of fraudulent-sounding inquiries, but when we do, we do a quick online search of the text to be translated and usually quickly find out that it's a Wikipedia entry or some other publicly available text. Such as the case for Cora's "translation" -- she found it online. Thanks to Cora for sharing her experience, and beware of advance payments! Depending on your bank, it might take up to a week or two to verify that the funds do really exist, so even if the money is showing on your account, it's not yours yet. Now: why do banks make the funds available pending verification? Seems to us like they shouldn't, but that's another story. 

If you have another scam report, please share it by leaving a comment or e-mailing us so we can share it with our colleagues around the world. 

The Ethical Dilemma: What Would You Do?

After many a client request, the European side of our business, for which we also hold a license as an advertising agency, recently started offering Facebook advertising services (via our German-language site www.facebook-werbung.com). It includes purchasing ad space, copywriting and, if applicable, translating the ad, reporting on the success of the ad, etc. One of our clients is a charming swim instructor with whom we have great rapport. However, she seems to have fallen for one of the many obscure “get rich on the internet” schemes. While there are many respectable affiliate programs out there (e.g. Amazon), the personalized horoscopes she tries to sell are not among them. (It took us a while to realize who is behind this specific scheme.) It works like this: some shady self-proclaimed internet gurus promise easy wealth on the internet by becoming a reseller of their products. They then urge people to purchase overpriced websites, databases, accounting software etc. from them. It’s the same old story: the ones digging for gold are not getting rich, but the one selling the shovels are.

As an affiliate partner, you “just” have to attract people to your new website selling these personalized horoscopes. So the swim instructor turned to us. Obviously, she has a limited budget for Facebook ads. Right now she’s attracting about 50 persons a week to her external website (to which the Facebook ad is linked). Problem is: the conversion rate for purchases on the internet is no more than 5 percent. To date, she has sold nothing. To increase her sales, she would have to spend a substantially higher amount of money in advertising, but she would end up not making any profit.

She wants to continue placing the ads, but we know it’s useless. During an hour-long (!) conversation last Friday, Dagy tried to diplomatically phrase her reservations. However, the client didn’t seem too receptive. She seemed indoctrinated by this business idea. She would like to continue placing her ad in December, but we strongly believe it is time for her to quit. Not just Facebook, but this whole horoscope thing altogether. While we do not want to tell clients what to do, we do feel the ethical urge to keep clients from getting exploited.  The client is very happy with our copywriting work and with the ad placement and advice we have given her thus far. However, her desire to get rich fast might be keeping her from seeing through this rip-off scheme.

What would you do? And if you refused to continue the Facebook ads, how would you explain that to the client? We appreciate your thoughts on this tricky matter.

On another note: happy Thanksgiving to all our colleagues, friends, clients, and family in the US! We know it's just another Thursday in Europe, so Dagy will be working while Judy will work on increasing the amount of food on her plate without looking like a glutton.

Court Interpreter Accused of Fraud

Thanks to our friend Álvaro Degives-Más of Reno Languages for digging up this troubling story and video. Many times, interpreters and translators fall prey to those trying to take advantage of their services (scams, non-payments), but court interpreter Milagros Rosa of Florida is actually the one who is guilty of illegal activities. Read and watch her story -- it's an egregious breach of, well, everything, and we certainly hope that there are very few Rosas in the world. 

Nigerian Scam Database

Ted Wozniak, our friend and colleague who runs the fantastic Payment Practices list (essential for every freelancer, and at $20/a year, it's a bargain) has graciously put together a free database where freelance translators and interpreters can report so-called Nigerian check scams.

The following information comes from Ted:

"Nigerian check" and similar scams have long been a problem for the unwary.
In recent years, the scam has evolved to target interpreters and translators
specifically.

To help prevent freelancers from falling prey to these scams, Payment
Practices has established a public database where you can report names and
other contact data when you receive an offer you believe to be a scam
targeted specifically at translators or interpreters. (Please report only suspected scams specifically targeting translators or interpreters -
reporting every suspicious email your receive would quickly overwhelm the
database.)

This database is open to the public and is NOT restricted to subscribers of
Payment Practices. You can access the database here. 

Scam Alert

Although of course you technically don't know if a translation or interpretation offer is a scam until you have been scammed, this one seems to be pretty obvious. We will go out on a limb here saying it's a scam, so please be careful. We are very concerened about the increase in fraudulent inquiries that our colleagues have been receiving. We also receive quite a few, and wanted to share this one with you. It's come from several names and e-mail addresses: Auto-Check Ltd Special Recruitment Agency (n31@gmx.co.uk) and Charlene Chuang (chuangcharlene@yahoo.com). The text is as follows:

Hello,
I will like to use this medium to introduce our agency to you, we are into special recruitment for our clients that require special and personal services.

We read through your profile and decided to enquire from you, if you will be able to do the service for our client whom will be needing your service in the united states for interpreting service comes july 25th 2010.

I will like you to send me all your resume so that we can do our credit check to the below ellen.klein@live.com, and know if you will be the right person for the client so that we can proceed.

Also I will like to know your number of hours you do embark on a job and your hourly charges and also if you can travel within the states in the united states as well

Thanking you in anticipation.

Cheers

Mrs Ellen Klein
Head,Recruit Dept
e.mail:ellen.klein@live.com
Auto-Check Ltd
Special Recruitment Agency
345 South Deeside Road,
Blairs,Aberdeen,
AB12 5YP
447565410064

It's a Scam Update: The Accused Speak(s)

In an effort to provide both sides of the story, and as a follow-up to this week's article It's a Scam: International Language Interpreters, we are hereby posting an e-mail that we received. We don't actually know who it's from -- no signature, no company information, just a free e-mail address with a name that appears to be unrelated the folks in question. Judging from the references being made, this appears to be from the accused party. Below is the entire unedited (no grammar or spelling mistakes were corrected) e-mail. Note: the writer refers to Ms. Dhillon, who is the interpreter who brought this to our attention and is one of many linguists still trying to collect. You can contact Harinder Dhillon for details on the case.

"It's amazing on how you can take the time to write these horrific things about individuals/companies without providing the companies or individuals to provide their side of the story. Faviola being the CEO of a small interpreting agency started an agency with the hopes of providing business for "Freelance Interpreters" not knowing how harsh "Self Employed Freelance Interpreters" would be. Interpreters seem to think that running a business is easy and that we are just sitting and collecting money and running. unfortunately anyone in the "Real Business World" will tell you that running a business is NOT easy and that collecting and running is not the case. I spent hundreds and thousands of dollars on sales and marketing to get business took out a second mortgage to keep business upfloat and unfortunately I was owed thousands of money from some of the customers that forced me to file bankruptcy.

As much as I tried to collect and pay interpreters I was unable to pay them all, I had to pay employees, business debts and was able to pay 98% of the interpreters and unfortunately I was unable to finish paying all of the Independent Contractors; I had mentioned to some that I would be happy to pass on the invoices that were due to the company for them to try to collect it themselves as since I was unable to successfully do, but of course they said "NO That was NOT their job" and they were unwilling to accept any of my offerings.

All I.C Contractors sign an Agreement agreeing to the Terms and Conditions and part of that agreement is that if the company goes out of business, death or bankruptcy - company, owners, officers are released of any and all liabilites and unfortunately interpreters were unwilling to understand and work with me that I had no choice but to file for bankruptcy and therefore it has released me from all liabilities and debts as well as protecting me from all of these bad threats and harrasments.

In regards to International Language Interpreters and 411-OTPI it has nothing to do with HS Interpreters, Inc and Mrs. Dhillon and you need to get your facts straight and remove these companies from this bad review as it has NOTHING to do with HS Interpreters, Inc debts.

Mrs. Dhillon needs STOP this harrasment against me my husband and family I will report it to my bankruptcy attorney and courts about these threats harrasmants and defamation on myself my husband whom again has NOTHING to do with my business or business liabilities.

If information about Mr. Aranda or my self is NOT removed we will seek legal action against individuals making these false acusations as he is NOT an owner nor an officer of the company or companies. The agency HS Interpreters, Inc. was a corporation and an entity of it's own and has nothing to do with me as a person."

It's a Scam: International Language Interpreters

California-based court interpreter Harinder Dhillon would like to share the information below with  her colleagues in Nevada and around the world. According to Harinder, interpreters as far away as Argentina are owed thousands of dollars. Many of them have already sued the company in small claims courts in California (where the company is based) or contacted the Department of Labor. We have never worked with this company, and are merely posting the known facts as shared with us by Harinder, which she assures us are correct. Here's an excerpt of the message we received:

Scam artists operating under different company names
Company making money from free services of interpreters & translators

“International Language Interpreters” - www.ILinterpreters.com, (866)-546-8855. Owners: Faviola Valencia/Jose Aranda. Company also known as: www.411-OPTI.com. Previously known as Hispanic Services, H.S. Interpreters and Northern California Interpreter Network (N.C.I.N). They reside at: 7116 Koropp Ct., Sacramento, Ca. 95842. They have an unlisted home phone number for obvious reasons. Their current office address od P.O.B. 7575, Citrus Heights, Ca. 95621 could be at: 3017 Douglas Boulevard, Suite 300, Roseville, Ca. 95661.

This husband and wife team has been scamming interpreters and translators for several years now. They change the company name frequently and answer telephone calls and emails under different names rather their own. They give out assignments, collect money from their clients but then do not pay the translators and interpreters. When they are called for payment, the classic responses are: the invoice was not received, browser was down, fax was not received, the check is in the mail or went out to the wrong address, paid the wrong translator, accountant fell ill or Paypal allows them to pay only a lesser amount. Phone calls to the company frequently go unanswered because they are carefully screened. In trying to collect their payments, interpreters have faced intimidation, harassment, and threats of legal action. When approached by process servers, Faviola often tells them that it is not her and Jose chases them to their cars.

Several recent complaints have been filed with the local Police Department and with District Attorney Jan Scully’s office in Sacramento, Ca. Toni Ruiz, at the D.A.’s office, can be reached at: 916-874-4782.

Deputy Labor Commissioner Helen Morales and Investigator Jay Cui can be reached at: 415-703 4810 and 415-703-4828. Deputy Labor Commissioner V. Lane Jacopetti can be contacted at: 510-022-3272.

For more information, please contact Harinder Dhillon at 925-833-1133, harinderdhillon@comcast.net.

It's a Scam: Daimond Translations

Unfortunately, scams are becoming more and more prevalent in our industry. This morning, we received the following from a Gmail address; which lead us to hit the delete button immediately. However, we were curious and googled the sender's company name, and sure enough, there were widespread reports of scams.

We currently need German to Spanish Translators.If you"re interested
to work with us please contact us by e-mail as soon as possible.
Thanks
Donald
DAIMOND TRANSLATIONS
e-mail:daimondtrans@gmail.com
P:6462916552
F:1-414-345-2346

If you get this e-mail as well, please don't reply to it. As a matter of principle, we don't reply to non-serious inquiries coming from non-professional e-mail addresses, so this was an easy decision for us. This new trend in the profession is quite alarming to us, but it's fantastic that we have forums where we can communicate these happenings to others. Our colleague Jill Sommer just reported on a similar scam (perhaps the same individuals are behind it?) last week on her blog.

Collections: The Silver Lining

Just in time for Easter, we'd like to share a very uplifting anecdote. One of our colleagues, Jeff Whittaker from Tampa, Florida, whom we have not even met, saw our posting on our collection issue with a company in the same city a few days ago. He actually e-mailed us with the following offer.

• He would gladly deliver our invoice to the non-paying customer's office!
  
• Since we only have a PO Box for an address, Jeff researched the Florida ficticious business register and came up with a physical address
  
• This address appears to be residential -- he ran it through Mapquest
• Still, Jeff is actually volunteering to head the agency's way!
• I must say that we are completely overwhelmed by this fantastic outpour of collegial behavior. It doesn't happen very often; but we are quite speechless.

We wish Jeff had found us a few days ago, as we already sent the non-paying customer to collections throug Dun& Bradstreet, who come recommended by the ATA. If the collection agency does collect the money, we will have to pay 30%. We'd rather have sent Jeff a fruit basket (or movie tickets) instead. We are very impressed by our colleague's generous offer. He lives in Tampa as well, and has done a great job at making sure we know that fabulous people share the city with perhaps questionable companies (just like in every city).

Thanks again, Jeff. You get the Twin Translations medal of collegiality. Jeff Whittaker is a legal translator in Tampa, Florida, and works from German, Spanish and Portuguese into English.

Linguists Beware: Non-Payment

This is a first (and last) for us, as we have only worked with two agencies on two projects in more than seven years in business. Unfortunately, one of these agencies has not paid us after more than 120 days. Calls, e-mails, and friendly calls from our pro bono legal folks have proved to be futile. With the advice of our friends and colleagues at the American Translators Association, we have decided to send this agency to collections. We already posted about this on payment practices sites so our fellow linguists can be aware of this company, but we also wanted to take advantage of this forum to spread the news. After all, the dissemination of this type of information is paramount to all our success.

The company in question is All Languages Inc., located in Florida. We have tried to establish two-way communication with them and were even willing to accept payment plans, but we've never even gotten past the receptionist who has no information, and we are told that the boss is not in the office but that we can call back in 30 minutes. And in an hour. Or leave the number and he will get right back to us. And what's that invoice number again? You get the idea. The owner's name is Erick Alin.

We hope that you find this information useful and that it saves you some grief -- no need for any of us to make the same mistake of working for a company that does not pay its contractors.

Fraud Alert: Wedding Interpretation Scam

One of our colleagues, Susanne Lenhart from Vienna, told us about a fraudulent inquiry she received recently, along with information on the scam details. We wanted to share this with our colleagues who might not have seen this one yet.

It is sad news that scam artists are increasingly targeting interpreters for assistance in interpreting at a wedding. Sounds innocous enough, right? However, during the e-mail exchange that follows, they are trying to get you to wire money that you have received from the "client" (in the form of a fake check) to pay for other wedding-related costs to a third party (we know, you wouldn't do this anway). Needless to say: don't touch this one with a ten-foot pole!

The text looks like this (this is the original version -- we resisted the temptation to edit and correct):

Hello,

I’m Jeff and My fiancee Mary are planning to have our wedding in the Month of March 2009.I have decided to give her a well treated package by giving her options of venue of celebration in anywhere in Europe,Based on her option,She has decided to choose Germany and We will be staying within Your area.We will be staying for 3Weeks from 7th of March to 28th of March 2008.My Fiancee only speaks English and My native language..

We will require Your services as an interpreter for 3 hours daily,for any 5 days that will be suitable for You within the period that We will be staying.So We will like to pay You in advance of our visit so She can be assured of an interpreter during her shopping for the wedding because this is her first visit.An early reply will be appreciated.Please acknowledge if you can offer this service and give me a price quote,as soon as you receive this email,so we can conclude on all other arrangements, as time is not really on our side.

Remain Blessed,

Jeff.

Fraud Warning: Small Businesses Targeted

The Latin Chamber of Commerce in Las Vegas just sent out an e-mail to all its members with a warning for all small businesses. Fraudulent letters are circulating on fake Small Business Administration (SBA) letterhead, asking small businesses to disclose bank information for tax purposes. Many of these scams are so obvious it's really not worth warning fellow linguists about, but this one appears to be harder to detect than most, so we wanted to post it here.

Here's the text of the press release as issued by the SBA. Please pass this on to fellow small business owners who might not know about it.

SBA Warns of Fraudulent Attempts to Obtain Bank Account Information from Small Businesses

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Small Business Administration issued a scam alert today to small businesses, warning them not to respond to letters falsely claiming to have been sent by the SBA asking for bank account information in order to qualify them for federal tax rebates.

The fraudulent letters were sent out with what appears to be an SBA letterhead to small businesses across the country, advising recipients that they may be eligible for a tax rebate under the Economic Stimulus Act, and that SBA is assessing their eligibility for such a rebate. The letter asks the small business to provide the name of its bank and account number.

These letters have not been sent by or authorized by the SBA, and all small businesses are strongly advised not to respond to them.

The scheme is similar in many ways to e-mail scams often referred to as “phishing” that seek personal data and financial account information that enables another party to access and individual’s bank accounts or to engage in identity theft.

The SBA is working with the SBA Office of Inspector General to investigate this matter. The Office of Inspector General asks that anyone who receives such a letter report it to the OIG Fraud Line at 1 (800) 767-0385, or e-mail at OIGHotline@sba.gov.