Scams

'Better than Viagra?'. 'We can offer you $300,000 at only $530 per month'. 'Adobe Photoshop for only $140'. 'I have US$140,000,000 and need your help to get it out of the country.' 'This is your bank. We need you to enter your password again as a security measure. Click here.' 'I made $463.40 today without leaving home.' They're out there: scams, rip-offs, and shady deals. People looking for a way to steal your money. Why do they exist so heavily on the internet? Because everyone wants a great deal. That secret solution to whatever they need. (If it's a secret how come they're telling me, a total stranger?) Or an easy way to archive their goal. And because people tend to be suckers. The fact is that spam would cease to exist if people stopped reacting to its message: there would be no reason to send all those sucker messages any more if the suckers weren't there.

The most common spam is that which is general in nature, targeting the population at large. A high percentage of people are interested in mortgage rates, in those little blue pills, and in more good software for their computer. But as the public becomes more conscious that the message is a crock these fraudsters have to become more creative in honing a message that will draw in the unsuspecting. Targeted messages have become the new trend: they obtain lists of names from a Christian dating service and send out a message claiming they are raising money to send Bibles to Nigeria--just send us your donations. And the newness of the message draws an unsuspecting public to react.

One of these targeted scams is aiming directly at escorts. The first known occupancies of it were in March of this year when Tyler, an escort in the UK, contacted me asking for advice. A lot of scams have minor consequences: you order the fake product and receive nothing or something totally useless. This fraud aimed at escorts, however, comes with very expensive consiquences.

Below is text from three emails received that fit the profile of this scam:

Some obvious things are immediately evident in these emails that bring to sage bits of advise to mind. "If it sounds too good to be true it probably is.", and if your intuition is telling you that something just doesn't sound quite right, then chances are it isn't. These are thoughts that should be guiding principles in every client transaction. But for the moment lets analyze the warning signs in these two emails.

1. All, particularly the first, contain horrific spelling and grammar. Guys with large amounts of money to spend on escorts generally have respectable writing skills. Their sentence structure may be poor if English is not their first language, aside from that it will be good.
2. Although you can't see it from what is being shared here, none of these emails had the escorts email address in the TO: field. They were mass mailings with escorts receiving blind carbon copies. This isn't a message to an escort of interest--it's a cattle call to any sucker available.
3. Nowhere do these emails use the name of a city: they don't specifically state either where the client is from or where they're headed to. For a cattle call, of course they can't do that: they need to keep it general so it remains fitting to all recipients.
4. The second and third offer to make payment up front. This is a warning sign on two fronts. First, in the history of escorting I doubt if a real client has EVER offered to pay up front in their initial contact with an escort. They may bring it up after contact has been established, but never in an initial contact. Second, I doubt if a real client has ever offered that their prepayment would be in full. In this scam not only are they willing to pay in full, but they want to pay you far, far more than your stated rate (explained below).
5. While most escorts don't have the know-how to trace IP addresses, we quickly ran a trace on them. The first one was sent from Silver Springs, Maryland (not from South Africa as the guy in further communication claimed); and the second one was sent from New York City, NY (not the UK). The third one was sent from Nigeria--a well known center for originating scams.

Pretending to be naïvely interested in the proposals I responded to four different encounters. In each case I replied from a different email in case it was the same person I was dealing with each time. They were willing to keep up the scam for several emails back-and-forth, thinking they were pulling in their prey, rather than that I was simply gathering information to discern what they were truly up to. I was able to confirm that they are using a variety of escort listing sites to gather the email addresses they use. I would be surprised if they were not also using escort review sites.

On the first contact I made there was little correspondence before it ended. I wanted to see how thorough they were on their contact connections. So I responded by saying he had mentioned he was coming to Canada, but didn't say what city his meetings were in. I mentioned that Canada is a large country and I wanted to make sure that he really was coming here (I literally used the word 'here') before proceeding further. His reply to that was a dance that showed he had no database to match up email addresses with locations. It was downright painful how obvious the bullshit was in that email!

On the second and third responses I gave the guy indication that I was interested in his visit to Vancouver. I treated it just like I would any first response to indicate a positive response and to get a better understanding of the client. In each we emailed back and forth about five times. The about the fourth email from the second one gave the following message (paraphrased, with me having provided my business upon his request): "I will send you a money order for six thousand US dollars. You will keep two thousand for your fees plus five hundred dollars to rent a suitable hotel room for the two of us and send the balance of three thousand five hundred to my business partner in the United States." I couldn't resist teasing the obvious issue here: why not send the $3500 directly to his business partner rather than through me. I got a hazy nonsensical response about taxation issues while assuring me that this was a legal way to avoid the tax problems. I was still scratching my head: absolutely everything about this stank so badly, yet I couldn't see exactly where the bullshit was. Then it came. His next email was in a much hastier tone than the previous ones had been. He'd just found out that due to postal regulations he couldn't mail me six thousand dollars without problems, so he needed my bank account number and other pertinent information so he could wire the money to me. Suddenly the picture was clear: this is the exact same scam as the "I need our help in getting $140,000,000 out of my country." It is very complex, but it involves a degree of identity theft and the end result is that you suddenly discover your bank account has a huge debit balance. There never was any six thousand dollars: they just wanted all your money (and then some) from your bank account.

I didn't follow the third one all the way through. Once I was sure it was going the same direction as the previous encounter I simply wrote back a direct, "Your scam is full of bullshit. Any further communication will be treated as harassment and turned over to legal authorities in Silver Springs (I deliberately was informing him I knew his location) for full investigation." He never responded.

More recently a fourth one came that I followed through on. I contracted with the client for $2,000. He sent me six money orders in the amount of $700 each, or $4200. I naïvely responded asking if he wanted to double our time or if there'd been a mistake. His response now was that he wanted me to send the extra $2200 back to him via Western Union. How does this scam work? Simple: the money orders he sent me were counterfit. I deposit them in my bank account and wire him the money before they come back as no good and the money gets reversed out of my bank account. Net result: I'm out $2200. Sadly I'm sure many escorts are falling for this scam as they're obviously investing a lot of time into it which they wouldn't be if it wasn't working.

I took the fake money orders to the post office where I talked at length with a postal inspector (we've since communicated more by phone and email). He notes this scam is on a massive scale and is a huge problem costing a lot of unsuspecting escorts huge amounts of money.

I haven't been able to discern how many people are involved in this scam, though know for sure it is at least two. One of them is a guy named Morgan Ian who lives in Scarborough, England. A second party is unnamed in somewhere New York State. I strongly suspect the Nigerian one is a third person and am not sure if he is connected to the other two. To date I've received dozens of emails for variations on this scam.

The message for all is simple and universal: your intuition should always be heavily relied on with all client contacts. The more you listen to it, the better it will develop to guide you on issues of common sense and reliability. Never let your desire for the dollar make you ignore that little voice.