Nancy Grimes

EMILIE BATISTA TERRAO wrote:

Bonjour,

J'ai été contactée il y a deux semaines pour un projet plutôt conséquent, surtout pour moi qui débute et qui ai un peu de mal à recruter des clients.
La personne semblait honnête et j'avoue que mon enthousiasme m'a légèrement aveuglée sur les premiers mails. J'ai finalement compris l'arnaque ce matin. Je reçois un mail de la personne qui me confirme que le paiement de l'intégralité de la traduction, et même plus, est parti par la poste. Elle m'indiquera quoi faire de l'excédent, me dit-elle. Et là, après quelques recherches, je tombe sur ce forum. J'avais bien imaginé l'arnaque du chèque en bois, car il m'est arrivé la même chose avec une voiture.
Bref, cette personne s'appelle Nancy Grimes et elle poste des appels d'offres sur le site Translatorsbase.

J'espère que mon mail aura éclairé ceux qui, comme moi, ont répondu à l'annonce de ces escrocs.

Sara Araújo wrote:

And this email, sent on the 5th of October, was the last I have ever heard from her. I had already translated 10 pages and refused other jobs, as she had advised, in order to assure the quality of this one. So the point of all this is that even the nicest emails and the nicest people can sometimes scam you. Be very careful with this person or with emails with similar content as these I have now exposed. And if anyone else was scammed or knows anything about this, please let of us know.

Enrique Cavalitto wrote:
When approached by a stranger with a business proposition ... you should always ask for verifiable contact information and then verify it.

Samuel Murray wrote:



I don't think that having asked for verifiable contact information would have saved the original poster from being scammed. Besides, the scammer says that she normally lives in France but is currently at a summit in the US. This means that even if she did give address information (including a fake French telephone number that forwards to a realistic sounding answering service), the original poster could not have verified it, and she would not have expected to be able to.

There is something to be said about verifying the contact, but it would be more helpful to explain what methods one should use to do so.

Enrique Cavalitto wrote:

The client could be real and the reasons presented could be true, but at least you should be aware that a risk has been identified.

Sara Araújo wrote:

I'm trying to trap her now.
Recently, I have received an obvious fake check from HSBC, without even no sender name, as you can see:

Sara Araújo wrote:
I'm trying to trap her now.

Jabberwock wrote:



In a word: don't. First of all, most likely there is no single "her" or "him". Usually Internet scams are run by specialized gangs of thugs you would best avoid. While most of the scammers are satisfied with conning their victims from afar, there have been cases of murders, kidnappings, extortions and other quite direct acts of violence and crimes related to Internet scams. Even if the scammers are writing from another country, they could quite possibly have associates in your country as well.

"Baiting" them may seem to be fun, but remember that you might be dealing with dangerous people. They know your real name and possibly address - if they feel threatened in any way, things could get rather unpleasant. If you want to do something to stop them, report them to the police.

Jeff Whittaker wrote:

0,05€ AND a 20% discount (without even being asked to give one) for a direct client who lives in Europe for a total of 1643€ for 41097 words????

Are rates in Portugal really that low or were you just baiting the scammer from the beginning because this seems incredibly low?

For example, I would have charged her a minimum of 6370 euros.

Triple your rates for direct clients as a bare minimum and you won't have to deal with these kinds of people because you will need fewer projects and you will attract a better class of clientele.



[Edited at 2012-11-04 10:27 GMT]

Robert Forstag wrote:

Each translator has to make his or her own decision regarding whether to file a police report under such circumstances. My own view is that doing so would likely be a waste of precious time. I very much doubt that the local authority you report it to will assign high priority--or even any priority--to tracking down such fraudsters. If you want to take the time to go to your nearest police station to file a report, you are free to do so. Others can make up their own minds as to whether such action is likely to be worth the bother.