Fake offers

Luisa Ramos wrote:

I doubt you saw this posted on Proz, rather that you received a message through your Proz email contact information. Unfortunately, that is open to anyone, as it should be, otherwise people not posting jobs on Proz, agencies, clients, etc., would never find you. What I and many others here do under these circumstances is search the Internet, search the forums, post a forum entry requesting opinions from colleagues, etc. I must say in this case I would have been suspicious from the get go.

If you receive job offers through your Proz account, ask yourself
Why me directly?
Why not post a job and find the most cost effective translator?
Who is this person, what information is out there that I can read about them?
Do they exist, are they for real?
What do my colleagues at Proz think about this?

Lastly, read all posts about similar scams, particularly the so-called Nigerian scams.

By the way, what was the offer? At some point he would have asked you to cash a check for him (higher than your estimate) and send him the difference because he was having some sort of problem doing it himself. And later you would have found out that it was a bad check. Or something like that. They are not even creative.

[Edited at 2009-08-12 13:46 GMT]

Luisa Ramos wrote:
...If you receive job offers through your Proz account, ask yourself
Why me directly?
Why not post a job and find the most cost effective translator?
...

France-Japon wrote:

[This offer in particular was posted as a job on Proz and was promptly removed after I and other collegues submitted support tickets.

Luisa Ramos wrote:



Even if it appeared on Proz, you just confirmed my point! What made you think there was something fishy, so fishy you asked that it be removed?

I did not see the job posted yet I would have dismissed it, especially after searching the Web and finding nothing.

What I mean is be careful, not paranoid certainly, just be careful, be savvy, be wary, do some research before jumping at the chance of any opportunity.

Fathy Shehatto wrote:

Hi everybody,

I have got this fake order few one week ago. I checked the BB and there was nothing supportive.
Then I asked him to pay half of the amount in advance, then he accepted and sent me 2 pages for translation as sample, hence I could discover what is the trip I was going to drop in. I wrote an apologize that I don't do any sample translations and I have just got another assignment.

France-Japon wrote:



Nothing was suspicious about the job offer itself, the user had a BB and everything. Which is why many people applied. When the first email came, I knew it was a scam (the email address did not correspond to the internet site provided in the BB, the document provided for translation made no sense in relation to the industry of the asker, he accepted high rates for more than 100 000 words without negociating, and the funniest part"Our donors will pay you through money cheques")
Hilarious.
I wonder if people really fall for this.
Anyway, maybe you should have a look at the other links on the subject, you would understand better the whole story. I don't want to write all the details again and again...

France-Japon wrote:

Anyway, maybe you should have a look at the other links on the subject, you would understand better the whole story. I don't want to write all the details again and again...