The lesson scam again!

[carl-swanson]

I’ve been getting at least one email a day on the music lesson scam, where someone in pigeon English wants someone to teach his daughter, son, whatever, an hour each day. I know this has been posted before. But have any of you seen an increase in these emails. How the heck did they get my email address? Is anybody really SOOOOOO STUPID to get involved with this thing?

[David Ice]

Hi Carl,

I think that people (or “bots”) troll the net in any number of parameters looking for email addresses from any teaching profession to send those out.

Similarly, I am getting CONSTANT snail mail offers for credit cards, etc., for the American Harp Society!

[Julietta Anne Rabens]

The two things i typically see in these scams are:

1. The proposed student will be in your country for a limited period of time, and requests daily lessons.

2. They want to know the entire fee so they can pay it upfront.

One way such a scam plays out (i’ve heard in non-music related scams) is that they overpay with a bad check and request you mail them the difference before their check fails to clear. It’s usually something like that.

There was one email requesting yoga lessons from me, and i was tempted to oblige by sending them home in pretzle fashion. [insert evil laughter]

[Denise Krasicki]

Hi Carl

The number of teachers I talked to that got these email scams, their email was taken off lists they were on as “harp teachers and gigging harpists” for a specific area and/or city, both on websites and in print publications of varying kinds.

[unknown-user]

If they are from a yahoo account, I always forward them to abuse@yahoo.com, so they can close the account.

[liath-hollins]

They’re a menace, those people.

I get constant emails from Nigeria, Ghana, Anywhere-else-far-away, giving some sob story about being unable to claim some vast inheritance, and will I put some rubber cheque in my bank account (whereupon I get to keep a few million quid for myself) etc. etc.

I suppose it only takes a few naive people to bite for it to be worth their while. It’s quite clever, as it preys upon people’s natural greed. Likewise, I’m amazed at the number of people who fall for the fake-foreign-lottery-win scam.

I’ve had a few dodgy wedding enquiries too – usually full of spelling mistakes and random capitalisation – along the lines of “will I come to play at a wedding, they’ll pay me £huge, but could I return some of the money in cash to save them buying British currency… it’s all a version of the same feeble scam.

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