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Scammer trolling ATA list?
Thread poster: Lisa Grayson
Lisa Grayson
Lisa Grayson  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 06:36
Spanish to English
+ ...
Nov 17, 2011

Here's another message I received this week that has the distinctive whiff of scam:

"Hi translator, my name is Sandra. I got your contact email from http://www.atanet.org. I want you to translate a document for me. The source language is English and the target language is Spanish. The document is attached for you to review and perharps get back to me with an estimation [price]. The deadline is 2 weeks... See more
Here's another message I received this week that has the distinctive whiff of scam:

"Hi translator, my name is Sandra. I got your contact email from http://www.atanet.org. I want you to translate a document for me. The source language is English and the target language is Spanish. The document is attached for you to review and perharps get back to me with an estimation [price]. The deadline is 2 weeks, is that possible? Payment will be made through a bank cheque, is that acceptable?. Let me know how it goes and please reply to this email for any further question. Thanks in advance."

The document is a 10,135-word article on religious news in 1991. It looks as if it were taken from an encyclopedia yearbook.

Source e-mail: [email protected]

I always suspected that these phishers/scammers harvested names from the ATA (American Translators Association) membership roster, but I've never encountered someone so brazen about it.

Of course, perhaps Sandra really does need a translation of 19 single-spaced pages of 20-year-old news, and I have simply become a cynical old trout.

Lisa ▲ Collapse
 
Thayenga
Thayenga  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 13:36
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
If so, then... Nov 17, 2011

Hi Lisa,

you could reply to that email and quote your price, but do mention that you - unfortunately! - don't accept checks. If Sandra really needs slightly outdated information translated, then she will surely offer a different method of payment.

That's what I do in case of a suspected (but not exactly obvious ) scam.
 
neilmac
neilmac
Spain
Local time: 13:36
Spanish to English
+ ...
Same old same old Nov 17, 2011

Hi Lisa.
My name's neilmac. Please send me your bank account number and other ID details so I can pay you handsomely for a yet another pie-in-the-sky translation job that doesn't really exist anywhere except in my crooked yet fertile imagination...
 
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 13:36
Member (2005)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Same old stuff Nov 17, 2011

I never reply to messages that do not show my name, which is clearly visible in my Proz.com profile and in my profiles in the websites of the associations I belong to.

Also, advance payment by check = Scam.
 
Kuochoe Nikoi-Kotei
Kuochoe Nikoi-Kotei  Identity Verified
Ghana
Local time: 11:36
Japanese to English
Agree with Thayenga Nov 17, 2011

Thayenga wrote:

Hi Lisa,

you could reply to that email and quote your price, but do mention that you - unfortunately! - don't accept checks. If Sandra really needs slightly outdated information translated, then she will surely offer a different method of payment.

That's what I do in case of a suspected (but not exactly obvious ) scam.


This is what I'd do as well, specifying a form of payment that is acceptable to me. And for a new client with that volume of work, either a 50% advance payment or regular milestones (payment at every 25% for example) would not be an unreasonable request to make.

Having said that though, this smells strongly of scam to me too.
 
Lisa Grayson
Lisa Grayson  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 06:36
Spanish to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Bravo, neilmac! Nov 17, 2011

neilmac wrote:

Hi Lisa.
My name's neilmac. Please send me your bank account number and other ID details so I can pay you handsomely for a yet another pie-in-the-sky translation job that doesn't really exist anywhere except in my crooked yet fertile imagination...


 
Lisa Grayson
Lisa Grayson  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 06:36
Spanish to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
thanks Nov 17, 2011

Thanks to everyone who responded. My original post should have mentioned that I had no intention of replying to "Sandra," but simply wanted to post her e-mail as a warning to others.
 


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Scammer trolling ATA list?







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