Possible translation project offer scam! Thread poster: yugoslavia
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yugoslavia
United States
Local time: 13:15
English to Spanish
+ ...
Dear colleagues from Proz.com,
I’m writing to you because I received an email message two days ago offering me a Spanish translation project.
I’m suspecting that this email message could be a scam. The phone number is from the state of Washington here in USA. I will be glad to copy and paste the copy of that email message for you. I want to verify if that text message is legitimate or if someone is trying to do a scam to me.
Thanks for your help and coo... See more Dear colleagues from Proz.com,
I’m writing to you because I received an email message two days ago offering me a Spanish translation project.
I’m suspecting that this email message could be a scam. The phone number is from the state of Washington here in USA. I will be glad to copy and paste the copy of that email message for you. I want to verify if that text message is legitimate or if someone is trying to do a scam to me.
Thanks for your help and cooperation, Spanish native speakers, feel free to write to me in Spanish.
Best regards,
Yugoslavia
I will be glad to provide the phone number if you write me directly to my profile.
Here is the copy of the message:
Lara Oehlert
[NOTE: The author is not a registered ProZ.com user or was not logged in when sending this message.]
Hello, please i have a document to translate from English to
Spanish. Let me know if yo are interested and available
to handle it.
Thank you ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Overpayment scam. | Aug 16, 2020 |
yugoslavia wrote:
[NOTE: The author is not a registered ProZ.com user or was not logged in when sending this message.]
Hello, please i have a document to translate from English to
Spanish. Let me know if yo are interested and available
to handle it.
Dear Yugoslavia,
There is a scammer or group of scammers conducting an overpayment scam, in which they will make a payment over the agreed amount, either by bank or check, request that you send over the difference, then disappear with your money before their payment is rejected by your bank. In order to conduct the scam, this person or group uses public use documents from different fields, usually related to government or agriculture. Regardless, under no circumstance should you send money to a client or prospective client.
The most common variations, reported in ProZ.com's Scams wiki: http://wiki.proz.com/wiki/index.php/Translator_scam_alert_reports —use the following files for translation:
"Research Project on Agricultural reforms in EU"
"Community development lecture on organic farming"
"Public Organisations Procedures Research"
"The impacts of climate change in coastal marine systems"
"FUNDAMENTALS OF BUSINESS PROFITABILITY"
"Analytical paper on the economic scale and growth of the collaborative economy France"
"Search for Philip K. Dick"
If you received any of these files, please, assume the offer is a scam and disregard it. If you received a different file, please let me know its title so I can incorporate it to our register or common source texts used for this scam. And, if you cannot find the email that contacted you among the reports in that page, please let me know the email address and presumed name used so I can also add it our reports.
Last, but not least, if you have the sender's IP and email address, please also let me know so I can block it from accessing the site. Use the following shortcut to submit a support request: https://www.proz.com/support?&mode=ask
To stay informed on common scams, you can check the Scams Alert Center: https://www.proz.com/about/translator-scam-alerts/default and the Scams forum: https://www.proz.com/forum/scams-946.html
I hope to have been of help.
Best,
Andrea
| | | | yugoslavia
United States
Local time: 13:15
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Thanks Miss Andrea. | Aug 17, 2020 |
Hi Andrea,
I have just got your message. Thanks for letting me know that this is a scam. Do you need the IP address of this person who sent me the message?
Thanks.
Yugoslavia
| | | | yugoslavia
United States
Local time: 13:15
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Hi Andrea,
Here is an update about the translation project scam. I checked the IP Address and the message is coming from Lagos, Nigeria. Let me know if you need other information.
Thanks.
Yugoslavia
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| Thank you, I just replied to your email. | Aug 18, 2020 |
yugoslavia wrote:
Here is an update about the translation project scam. I checked the IP Address and the message is coming from Lagos, Nigeria. Let me know if you need other information.
I just replied to your email. Thank you for taking the time to share this information with me.
| | | | yugoslavia
United States
Local time: 13:15
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
You're welcome Miss Capuselli. Do you want me to send you copies of the email messages?
When I find out that the person was located in Nigeria, I ignored the messages. He told me that he was located in USA.
| | | | | I got offered the Public Organizations Procedures project | Sep 1, 2020 |
I'm pretty new to translation work and finding projects as a novice hasn't been particularly easy.
I got a very similar message a few days ago- I was offered a good amount to translated an 11 000 word document.
Like a total bloody schmuck (perhaps out of desperation) I accepted.
I translated the whole bloody text, sent it and everything. And honestly, I did it in like 3 days, and I was so happy to finally have a freelance job. Honestly. I didn't even sleep so I... See more I'm pretty new to translation work and finding projects as a novice hasn't been particularly easy.
I got a very similar message a few days ago- I was offered a good amount to translated an 11 000 word document.
Like a total bloody schmuck (perhaps out of desperation) I accepted.
I translated the whole bloody text, sent it and everything. And honestly, I did it in like 3 days, and I was so happy to finally have a freelance job. Honestly. I didn't even sleep so I could finish it, mainly because I was so excited.
I was told I would be paid via money order, which sounded extremely sketchy- I insisted PayPal was more secure, etc.
Anyways- I wasn't asked for any information other than information readily available on my resume/CV- which I send out all the time anyways. So it's good to know I worked like a dog, didn't sleep, didn't eat, edited the shit out of the most boring document I had ever had the displeasure of reading, etc. and that there will be no payment.
It all just sounded too good to be true, after all.
This is just disheartening. People suck. ▲ Collapse
| | | | yugoslavia
United States
Local time: 13:15
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Thanks Cinthya | Sep 1, 2020 |
Hi Cythia,
I have just got your message. I had serious problems with my internet connection. They fixed it only today. A technician came to my home.
Cinthya, do you know how to check the IP addreses of senders? I can explain to you how to do this.
Do you also copy of the message that I sent you?
Please write me directly to my profile.
Thanks.
Yugoslavia
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Liviu-Lee Roth
United States
Local time: 13:15
Romanian to English
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| Just wait for the fake cashier's check. | Sep 1, 2020 |
Dear Cynthia,
You might receive via FedEx a (fake) cashier's check for an amount larger that what you expect.
Don't deposit the check. It is fake! It is the classic overpayment scam.
I am sorry that you learned your lesson the hard way.
Stay safe,
lee
| | | | Sheila Wilson 
Spain
Local time: 18:15
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
| For next time | Sep 2, 2020 |
Cynthia, I know you're hurting, and I don't mean to rub salt into the wound, but a couple of tips for your next job.
Cynthia Buitron wrote:
I wasn't asked for any information other than information readily available on my resume/CV- which I send out all the time anyways.
But it's your business to find out everything you need to know about them. Google for Risk Management and Due Diligence. You need to put procedures in place. I'm afraid if you just accept jobs and start work, you'll have more scams. You need to get all the facts of the job straight and in black and white before you start work. Otherwise, you risk losing perfectly good clients too.
Basically:
(1) You need to be able to contact the client, so you need their registered company name and full postal address. Then you check them out, diligently.
This "client" of yours didn't give a correct postal address that you could verify and check against their company registration, Google Earth, their IP address, etc. In fact Google would have told you that this was a scam if you'd asked.
(2) You need to know what the job entails (word count, deliverable, formatting...).
(3) You need to tie down exactly how much you will be paid, by what method, when, and who will pay any associated costs.
The "client" would have got round to making an advance payment. Sometimes, that's legitimate (tho you don't expect the client to push for it!). It's sensible to wait until that payment is proven to be valid before starting work. That would have saved you any more bother or wasted time.
I'm really sorry you wasted your time on this. Do get some value by putting up an excerpt of your translation as a sample on your ProZ.com profile. And take heart from the fact that the outcome could have been so much worse: you could have mailed thousands of dollars of your own money to some unknown person. It has happened to others.
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