After a thread of emails back and forth I never received an answer of where they were located. So I took the phone number and researched it and found it was on a Scottish fraud investigation site. It was however for a scam for a group for a hotel. So I googled the author of the email and interestingly enough the name did come up for an offshore oil drilling journalist. That made sense since the company was in offshore drilling. So I thought ok great...but alas...
I searched the name again and it came up for the author of the scam you get that someone has died and there are no forwarding relatives so a bank is contacting you. Big flag there!!! Then I searched scams against tattoo studios and low and behold there was the exact same email word for word thatI had received but with a different name.
While all this searching was going on I was still sending them the proposal since I still held hope this could be. This was going to be well over $8000US of work! So I received the fact that it was approved and the company was paying for all of it and he wanted to get the info to send the money. He asked if we took cardit cards and we do through paypal so I thought that was another layer of protection since they have fraud protection for their clients. Meanwhile I am sensing something is up and I was trying to figure out how they could fraud us if they were using a credit card. It wasn´t a check so I was baffled.
Come to find out they have a "company" that does all their travel plans (ie. flights, transportations, hotel accomodations, etc) but they do not accept credit cards...(hmmm?). So I was asked if they could charge another $5000US in addition to our proposal and then I could send it back to them!!!!!! Well one that won´t happen as I don´t have an extra $5000 sitting around but also that just doesn´t work with me. I am not sure the details but somehow they must send you a cloned card that works and posts in your account and you send the balance back to them and then your bank figures it out and you are out of that balance that you sent back.
So I very nicely explained to him tha we couldn´t do that. Interestingly enough but not surprisingly, I never heard back. I did have one email after the request that "pleaded" with me to help them out and they really wanted to do business with us. Thanks but no thanks. I explained that once they arrived here they could bring in the cash or they could just pay the approved deposit with us with the credit card. Never heard back.
So just wanted to post this blog for any of you out there that are not aware of this. It began with the hotel and yoga groups and now they approach tattoo artists since they are very lucrative too. But I am sure there are many different branches of this scam..just remember.. if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is! Happy tatting!
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