New Scam Involving Translators

Quills Blog:

Hello everybody in the Translation Comunity, we are writing this short article to warn you about a new scam that involves us all. If we spread the word, we’ll be alert and avoid being their victims.
This new scam involves a person asking for a translation, into your language pair, then sending payment with a cashier check for an amount higher than the project’s amount, and then when you get back to them, they will tell you that it was a mistake, and that they want you to transfer the rest of the money via Western Union to another person. The check has a stop payment, and it will never be credited to your account, so you lose the money from the project plus the money you have sent them.

Here is an example:

First email:

My name is Rick Taylor from Huntington Beach,California but presently on an official assignment in Bucarest,Romania.I will need your service to translate a write-up for me.I actually need to make a presentation to some group of spanish speaking people abroad and I will be provided with a translator in the country where I have to present it,so i will need you to help me translate the paper to spanish,so each participants can have a copy in spanish language and they can follow through. Let me know your rate for a total of about 22 pages presentation (see attachments).

Thank you.

Rick

After the work is completed:

Hi,

How are you doing? Have you received the check sent to you by my associate,Isaac Hunter from macon,Ga? Thanks.

Rick.

After you confirm you have received the check:

I just got to know this morning that my associate(Isaac Hunter) made out a Cashier’s Check for the wrong amount($3900) to you.I instructed him to send just $1123.20 to you and have the rest of my funds sent to my interpreter in Romania,but he made a mistake sending the whole of my funds to you.It seems the figure i sent to him actually got him confused or he’s probably got a lot of things to handle at these time that he couldn’t get simple instructions right.However,i am very sorry about this mistake.

Kindly proceed to your bank/atm to have the check deposited.As soon as check clears your bank,deduct your own funds($1123.20) plus whatever tax the check may incur and have the rest of the funds sent to my interpreter in Romania via Western Union using the information below.The fee for the transfer can also be deducted from my balance as that’s not a problem.I am very sorry for the inconvenience this may cause you once again.

Please,provide me with the MTCN and the exact amount sent or scan the western union receipt to me as soon as the transaction is done so i can forward it to Stely.I look forward to hearing from you.Have a wonderful weekend.

My interpreter’s information:
First Name: Steliana-Elena Last Name: Panait
Address: 20 Valenii De Munte,
City: Giurgiu
Country: Romania.

Warm Regards,

Rick.

--

We have received a lot of email from companies and translators reporting this, and they are all very similar.

Also, we have found a blog that also speaks about this.

http://www.artnewsblog.com/2006/04/art-scams.htm

Please be alert, and if you have more information, this will be useful for the whole comunity. When faced with these people, we need to be all together.

Thanks for your support.
Carolina Otero
Quills Language Services
www.quillslanguage.com