I got sent one about E-Bay when I don't even use E-Bay. It looked quite official though, with good English. It was a spoof though.

Now I am being harassed - phone call after phone call. They are calling 30 times and hour. :-(

I would take the phone off the hook but then I might not get my calls from "real" students.

FlyingTeacher

thats awful! couldnt you give your students another no. like your mobile or something? though i suppose then it costs them more money..no winners then

Could you block them at all? Or change your phone number?

What an absolute pain ! Let's hope they get tired soon. Can you try :

picking up the phone, then putting it down and walking away?

put the phone next to your radio and leave them listening to radio 3, or some foreign language programme turned up really loud?

Why can' t the police do anything??

IF this is genuine, you can get a call scanning system whereupon the caller has to identify themselves BEFORE you answer the call. This is available from Argos.

Scams that send you a cheque wait until it has cleared, and request you to forward the money. They then cancel the cheque, so they receive the money but then you are out of pocket. Ignore anything that is about money, banks, etc from people you don't know.
If you are unsure about an email from bank or ebay, forward the mail to them asking if it is genuine. They will get back to you and give you advice.

I just received a nearly identical email here in the US inquiring about "dulcimer leason". When I replied that I'm not qualified to teach dulcimer, only autoharp, the person (a Ms. wanda smith) changed the request to 'autoharp leason" and gave a phone number in the UK (+44...etc) to call.

My terms for lessons are cash or check for the exact amount due following each lesson, and after I made that clear "Mrs.Smith" seemed to lose interest. Hmmm.

A friend of mine used to teach at Trinity College, and apparently used to get a few foreign nationals wanting short term lessons, the scam in this case was against immigration rather than the music teachers as they were wanting to come into the country on a student visa, then disappear.

I've seen this before and, yes, it is a scam. Ignore it completely.

Elisabeth

Got this one to-day -

Goodday Teacher,
My name is Rebecca I am female in west Africa.i am
19 yers old.It's my great laeasure to contact you and
comfirmed if you can Teach me Piano lesson for
2months. I will want you to know that I have an
interested in comming to your lesson in Uk.I will
like you to give me the cost per hour/half hour,i
have a uncle in the state that will cater for the
payment .I will be Waiting to hear from Back
asap. Regards.
Rebecca......
Hmmmm !

I regularly get those scams from Africa to my Yahoo account saying that someone with my surname, a national of my country, recently died and my help is needed to release his funds and that a cut would be mine. Well, they usually clear off when I tell them that I am married to a foreigner and that British people do not have my current surname!!!!

I just had one from an African chap asking for £500 to release his project from an engineering company. He's trying to convince me he's truthful by claiming to be a member of the same religion, but is messing up badly!! I like to play with them a bit, but I NEVER give them any info.

Elisabeth

I've recently starting receiving these sort of emails daily - the only website I can think that publishes my address is the UK Piano website. I've asked them to remove my email address & have alerted them to the problem.

Still, if you want a laugh, read this! at least they took the trouble to dream up a story....

Hello Teacher,
I am Eng. Matthew Peterson from England .I would like to book my Daughter Tracey for piano Training with you, she insists on having knowledge on it due to the inspiration she got from Alicia Keys of USA.She is 18 years old, and still in School. Let me know the procedure of your training and also notify me in your reply if you provide one on one training because that is the only way i want her to do the training. She will be staying with a host family because i am travelling to Africa for a contract with Globacom PLC and i will have to let my apartment out to someone else because my wife is based in USA and i can't leave her all alone in the house that is why i am letting my apartment out. Let me know how much you charge for your training per hour as i would like her to have lectures twice a week and she will be doing the whole course for two months which is the period she will be spending for the training because i have already booked her for another training for foundation in Information technology where she will be spending four months. Let me know if you are okay with this arrangement because the host family Charge me 100 pounds for a week and to the calculation of six months, which she will be spending with you and for the course in foundation for IT it is 2520 pounds for six months.ADVICE if it is not too expensive but mind you it includes all her money forTransportations ,Phone bills,Foods,a personal room for her and others.I should have booked an HOTEL room for her but i wouldn't want her to be exposed to any activities going on around the HOTEL. So let me know how much your training will be for the time i am booking for and also the Duration you think is okay for the training. Hope you get back soonest on all my Arrangements ADVICE ASAP
Best Regards,
Eng. Matthew Peterson

These things don't even resemble serious enquiries do they?
And people are meant to be fooled by them....

This thread is very sad but also makes me laugh hysterically... who ARE these people- and worse, who is genuinely fooled by them?

One variation is that they send you a well-forged bankers draft for more than the amount and ask you to return the difference to them. The cheque clears your bank and is credited your account, but is detected as a forgery when it gets back to the one that is alleged to have issued it, whereupon you have to return its value.

Well the harrassment has stoped thank goodness! (touch wood!). Strangley came to an aburpt halt after I had a visit from two police officers who handed copies all of my e-mails over to the fraud team. Sad thing is they probably can't track them down - often these details lead to fake addresses or vacant properties.

But, I found out what it was all about. Because I had responded to the original e-mail (thinking it was a real enquiry), I gave them my fees, and they sent a cheque for several months tuition for several children (£8000, which was more than I quoted). A few days later I had an e-mail saying they had sent me around twice the amount they should have and that once the cheque had cleared I should forward the excess funds to their booking agent to pay for the children's travel and accomodation. The cheque was of course fake, but the cheque number forged on a real cheque registered to an Irish company. The bank told me that if I had banked it, I would have been able to see the funds in the accounts for anything up to 6 months before it finally bounced. By this time, some poor unsuspecting honest individual could have sent them the remainder of the money. Luckily I realised it was too good to be true before I banked it. When I refused to speak with them on the phone they sounded very aggitated but eventually left me alone.

I didn't lose anything. It did however waste a lot of my time, on the phone to the bank, police, tracking down the company who supposely sent the cheque. I have had other similar e-mails since, and automatically send them to the trash!!

Hope this helps anyone in the same boat!

FlyingTeacher