Last year I picked up some part-time tutoring to make a little extra money. After growing discontented with the company I was working for, I decided to see if I could work independently, freelancing for a few hours a week.

I live near a fairly well-to-do area of LA, so I figured perhaps I could tutor some private school students who needed some extra help in their literature and writing classes, and charge their parents out the wazoo for my services. I wanted to be a little more selective than Craigslist might allow, and it seemed to me more likely that wealthy parents wouldn’t be very comfortable finding a tutor for their kids on the same website where people advertise for hookups (whether trailer or other).

Trawling around on the web, I found a site devoted to free advertising for tutors, both needed and available. I diligently filled out the necessary electronic forms, crafting my profile as carefully as if it were for a dating website–years of experience teaching writing and literature? – check; higher degrees? – check; photo of me smiling, dressed for success – check. I sat back to see if anything could possibly develop from this low-risk gamble.

Lo! Within just a few days I received an email that promised to provide a quick payoff.

Hello,
I got your email from a tutor directory and i will want you to tutor my son in Grammar. He is 14 yrs in high school and he is coming to CA. for his holiday. I want you to get back to me with your charges. Waiting to read from you.
Regards
Mark

The use of “holiday” hinted to me that Mark was educated in British English; the peculiar diction (“Waiting to read from you”) and grammar problems indicated that perhaps his education had not been terribly thorough. All the same, I wrote back almost immediately, asking for more details.

Hello Mark,

Thanks for writing. My fee would depend on two things: (1) how far I would have to travel to meet with your son and (2) how long I would be tutoring him for. Generally, I charge between $20 and $25 an hour. The farther I have to go and the shorter the time period (in terms of weeks or months), the higher the fee.

Could you tell me the cross streets where you live and how long your son will be in Los Angeles and needing tutoring?

Thanks again,

Timothy

I didn’t want to charge too much for this, my first tutoring job. Scaring him off by asking for $50 or $75 an hour would be silly, I thought, and wanted to see what the job entailed, after all, before setting a firm price.

Zip! A return email appeared in my inbox, providing some more information and requesting more from me.

Hello,
I received your email and i will want you to know more about my son.My sons’ name is Richard, he is 14 and he is in high school(Abbey wood secondary school) in 20 Abbey wood,London,SE2. He is coming from United Kingdom to the state for his holiday, he will be in town on April 19 and i wouldn’t want him to stay without read from at lease 2hours each day. So i will want you to calculate the amount of 2 hours a day and you will take him for 22 days. So i will want you to get back to me with the total amount. At this point i will want you to know that my company will handle the payment of the tutoring fee and other expenses. If you are ok with this,i will want you to get back to me with the following details for payment.
Full Name …….
Mailing Address…
Home phone……
Cell Phone number…..
I will be waiting to read from you as i can arrange asap and you can feel free to give me a cal on (0044)-1-788-662-4855.
Mark

A little frustrated about Mark’s not having given me the address or even general location where his son would be staying, but also a little impressed by how much tutoring work the gig could provide, I wrote back again. I didn’t really want to provide my detailed contact info, but felt that it would show a little bit of good faith on my part if I complied with his request. After all, this guy was offering me work and didn’t really seem to care how much it cost him. If I was cooperative, he would likely be more cooperative, too, right?

Hello Mark,

Two hours a day every day for 22 days will take some re-scheduling on my part, but I could make the time for it, and happily so. Due to the intensive nature of tutoring every day, I would need to charge a bit higher than my regular fee. Also, as I normally only tutor during the work week, I will ask for more for weekends.

The crucial element that remains for me to determine my fee is where, exactly, I’d be meeting with your son. …

That said, here is my information:

Full Name: Timothy John Wager
Mailing Address: [thankfully a post mail box address, but hereby deleted]
Home phone: [stupidly included, but hereby redacted to avoid repetition of the error]
Cell Phone number: [ditto]

I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks again and best,

Timothy

Edited out from the above is a long description of how sprawling a city LA is, comparing it to London. I thought it was a nice touch on my part to clarify the importance of location by giving Mark an example based on his own experience. I spent some time on Google Earth finding the Abbey Wood School and some other locations in London that would illustrate to him what a big difference it would make to me if his son were staying in Hollywood or, say, Pasadena. Also, going to the trouble of doing that work would help impress on my potential employer that I really needed the location if he wanted to hire me, and also let him know that I was serious about my work.

A few days passed before I received a reply.

Hello,
I got your email and Richard will be in Los Angeles,15 April and anytime comfortable with you,so my company associate in USA has send you the payment out of my monthly income, you should be receiving the payment in your mail address asap, when you do i would want you to send me an email or give me a call so i can book for my son ticket to the state and i believe we have to order textbook for the study? so i would want you to get back to me asap.

“What is with this guy?” I started thinking. I began to create a whole back story and flesh out the characters. Mark seemed too busy or inattentive to figure out that before he could pay me we needed to settle on how much I was going to get paid. Was he some sort of wealthy businessman who didn’t care what things cost? His poor grammar indicated a lack of education, but perhaps he was a self-made man who had raised himself by his proverbial bootstraps. All the same, he didn’t really seem to care what his son wanted. The poor kid was going on vacation, but his dad wanted to force him to study two hours a day, every day for over three weeks! Maybe there was an ex-wife involved, Richard’s mother, who lived in LA. Maybe Mark was using Richard to control his ex. Maybe … my mind turned it over and over.

Also, now Mark had changed the date of arrival–only three days off from when I received the email. He wanted to buy the plane ticket only after I received the payment? But paying for an international plane ticket with such little notice would cost a fortune!

Confused, bemused, I ignored this last email for a few days. If the check turned up I’d contact him and sort out the details.

Then, on the following Saturday, I received a call on my cell phone from Mark. I was on the other line at the time so I didn’t pick up. I happened to be talking to my brother-in-law (whom some of you may know as one of the Bay Area’s most sought-after wedding photographers) and told him the story.

He immediately tipped me off, of course, to what you, dear reader, have known all along. I was being targeted for a scam.

Jon knew a photographer who had been similarly targeted. Here’s how it works. Over the web and from a location far away, the scammer contracts an independent service provider to do a great deal of work. For some reason, though, he needs to send the funds from an account not his own, in the form of a cashier’s check for an amount several thousand dollars over the sum of the service provider’s fee. The remaining balance, it turns out, needs to be returned to the scammer, purportedly in order for him to pay for transportation or something else, without which the business cannot be completed.

The cashier’s check looks real enough that a bank will cash it, so it seems like, though a bit peculiar, everything is on the up-and-up. The victim cashes the check and sends off the extra money, waiting for further instructions. A week or ten days later, he or she gets a notice from the bank that the check was a phony. The victim is out the thousands of dollars sent to the scammer, and now also owes the bank the entire amount of the check, plus penalties. Also, he or she is in danger of being prosecuted for check fraud.

Well, it hadn’t gotten that far with me when I learned of the potential scam, but I still wasn’t entirely convinced that my correspondent was trying to rip me off. I took to the trusty web and Googled “tutor scam.” The first link that came up sealed it. There I found the story of a few other tutors who had received emails almost identical to the ones “Mark William” had sent me, this time from a “Mark Willison” whose son Richard attended Abbey Wood School, London. This, apparently, is one of many “Nigerian scams,” so termed because many of the participants either live there or are of West African origin, living in the UK.

I now couldn’t fathom why I had thought for even a moment that this was anything but a scam. What a chump I had been! I immediately emailed “Mark,” including the link to the story I had found.

Hi Mark,

It seems you’re getting famous. Please don’t contact me any more.

I thought that would be the end of it, but strangely I received the following a couple days later.

Hey,
Its been a while i got an email from you. I will want to know if you have receive the payment my company associate sent. If you are i will want you to get back to me Asap, so i can make arrangment for Richards’ coming. I will be waiting to read from you.

I began to develop a different story from the one I had embroidered about a father and son. Here were con men so over-stretched, so over-worked, that they didn’t even have the time or wherewithal to notice when they were being called out on their game. “Shouldn’t there be a scammers’ union?” I thought. “Shouldn’t there be some kind of quality control?”

Sure enough, the next day I received the check.

“JP Morgan Chase Bank? Signed by John Kennedy? They must take me for a complete fool,” I thought. However, now that actual international mail and check fraud had taken place, I felt that I had something of an obligation to do what I could to alert the authorities. Maybe I could even help bring “Mark” to justice. It would serve him right, at the very least for treating me like an idiot, let alone what crimes he had actually pulled off. I slyly put on my junior Sherlock Deerstalker cap and emailed him back.

Mark,

I received the check today. I will not cash it until
I meet with your son for the first time and we can
figure out our tutoring schedule.

Please let me know what his contact details are here
in Los Angeles, or I will be waiting to hear from him.

Thanks,

T

The next day, he wrote back.

Hello,
I got your email that you receive the payment in your mail today. I contact my company and they told me the associate sent you the payment for my month income and they alson made me to know is for $5500, which include Richard’s flight fee and other thing his gonna need when he is in state, So i would want you to take out your tutoring fee which is $1100 and i would also want you to get the rest send via western union so i can book for richard’s flight ticket and the hotel today. I want you to send it to my name and richards’ name too, Send 2500 to my name and the rest fund(1000) should be send to richard and here is the information you need.
MY NAME:MARK WILLIAM
AND MY SON’S NAME: RICHARD WILLIAM
HOME ADDRESS:7, Rudgwick Court, Woodville Stree.
ZIPE CODE : SE18 5JH.
PHONE NUMBER :(0044)-788-662-4855.
I want you to get bac to me with the details asap.

Me and my son

The obviously-fake photo of “Mark and Richard” happily sitting in front of an iMac was going just too far, really. Who would believe that it’s real?

On top of that, the only math he got right was that my initial asking fee of $25 an hour would work out to $1100 for 44 hours of tutoring.

I was excited, too. My little bit of detective work had elicited from him an address! I set to work finding out to whom I would report such dastardly deeds. I filled out electronic forms on the websites of the Federal Trade Commission and Scotland Yard, including “Mark’s” address.

I envisioned a fresh-faced Scotland Yard detective receiving my information, jumping up from his or her desk and shouting out, “We’ve got a live one!” Said detective would immediately notify the local constabulary in Abbey Wood, who would roar in, break down the door, and seize “Mark” and his cohorts, along with their computers and check-forging equipment. I would refuse all rewards for my part in bringing down a notorious ring of international confidence men, saying that I had simply done what conscience and duty called for.

In my dreams, dear reader, in my dreams this all took place. In truth, I’ve never heard from “Mark” again.

I did, however, recently receive another email.

We are pleased to inform you that your email address has emerged as one of the winning email accounts of 753, 437.00
GBP Great British Pounds in the just concluded UK LOTTERY PROMO email award. To file for your claim, please contact us
with great proof that you own this winner email.

Contact us for further details and let us have your Name:
Address:Sex:Age: Country of residence:Telephone number:

Yours Truly,
Sir Mark Dulle.
Co-ordinator(Online Promo Programme).

You gotta hand it to them for trying, right?