Craigslist help - urgent?

I have someone who barely speaks english, lives in the UK, is sending her daughter over to the States to live with a 'guardian' and a 'nanny', and is looking for a tutor for her - $50/hour. She's agreed to hire me. Willing to pay me through a money order. Says I can't call her daughter up for a chat because she doesn't have a number; she just got to the States.



I thought it sounded legit until I looked up the whole Craigslist verification code thing. Thing is, she keeps asking me to send her a verification code that Craigslist has sent to my phone - I thought this was all part of the process until I decided to grow half a brain and look it up.



Is she (or he maybe?) using my cell phone number (I had given it to her [him?] earlier) to post spam/scams up on Craigslist? Also, whenever I do get a text from Craigslist, it's always in French, and the number area code is 714 - should I just drop this deal and look for something else?



She asked for my billing address so she could wire me the money, and because I'm obviously an idiot very desperate for money, I gave it to her. Should I be worried?



She has, however, left the timing and venue of the tutoring up to me entirely, so maybe she isn't a scammer.



Also, I'm confused about weather it's a he or she because whenever she emails, it's from a 'Samuel Anderson', but she always signs off as Suzie Wong.



Am I being an idiot?Craigslist help - urgent?
100% scam.



There is no job, no daughter, no one traveling and no one in the UK.



There is only one scammer trying to steal your hard-earned money by sending a fake check to your billing address, shred the check when it comes and ignore further emails from that criminal.



The next email will be from another of the scammer's fake names and free email addresses pretending to be the "secretary/assistant/accountant" and will demand you cash a large fake check sent on a stolen UPS/FedEx billing account number and send most of the "money" via Western Union or moneygram back to the scammer posing as the "travel company" while you "keep" a small portion. When your bank realizes the check is fake and it bounces, you get the real life job of paying back the bank for the bounced check fees and all the bank's money you sent to an overseas criminal.



Western Union and moneygram do not verify anything on the form the sender fills out, not the name, not the street address, not the country, not even the gender of the receiver, it all means absolutely nothing. The clerk will not bother to check ID and will simply hand off your cash to whomever walks in the door with the MTCN# and question/answer. Neither company will tell the sender who picked up the cash, at what store location or even in what country your money walked out the door. Neither company has any kind of refund policy, money sent is money gone forever.



When you refuse to send him your cash he will send increasingly nasty and rude emails trying to convince you to go through with his scam. The scammer could also create another fake name and email address like "FBI@ gmail.com", "police_person @hotmail.com" or "investigator @yahoo.com" and send emails telling you the job is legit and you must cash the fake check and send your money to the scammer or you will face legal action. Just ignore, delete and block those email addresses. Although, reading a scammer's attempt at impersonating a law enforcement official can be extremely funny.



Now that you have responded to a scammer, you are on his 'potential sucker' list, he will try again to separate you from your cash. He will send you more emails from his other free email addresses using another of his fake names with all kinds of stories of great jobs, lottery winnings, millions in the bank and desperate, lonely, sexy singles. He will sell your email address to all his scamming buddies who will also send you dozens of fake emails all with the exact same goal, you sending them your cash via Western Union or moneygram.



You could post up the email address and the emails themselves that the scammer is using, it will help make your post more googlable for other suspicious potential victims to find when looking for information.



Do you know how to check the header of a received email? If not, you could google for information. Being able to read the header to determine the geographic location an email originated from will help you weed out the most obvious scams and scammers. Then delete and block that scammer. Don't bother to tell him that you know he is a scammer, it isn't worth your effort. He has one job in life, convincing victims to send him their hard-earned cash.



Whenever suspicious or just plain curious, google everything, website addresses, names used, companies mentioned, phone numbers given, all email addresses, even sentences from the emails as you might be unpleasantly surprised at what you find already posted online. You can also post/ask here and every scam-warner-anti-fraud-busting site you can find before taking a chance and losing money to a scammer.



6 "Rules to follow" to avoid most fake jobs:

1) Job asks you to use your personal bank account and/or open a new one.

2) Job asks you to print/mail/cash a check or money order.

3) Job asks you to use Western Union or moneygram in any capacity.

4) Job asks you to accept packages and re-ship them on to anyone.

5) Job asks you to pay visas, travel fees via Western Union or moneygram.

6) Job asks you to sign up for a credit reporting or identity verification site.



Avoiding all jobs that mention any of the above listed 'red flags' and you will miss nearly all fake jobs. Only scammers ask you to do any of the above. No. Exceptions. Ever. For any reason.



If you google "fake check cashing job", "fraud Western Union tutor scam", "money mule moneygram scam" or something similar you will find hundreds of posts from victims and near-victims of this type of scam.Craigslist help - urgent?
It is a scam. I've gotten the same emails. People beginning their emails with a woman's name and ending with a man's name. Saying they have a son and than a daughter in the next email. Drop this deal and I believe you should be worried about the address thing. Do not give the person (man, woman, whoever it is) any more information.Craigslist help - urgent?
100% SCAM



DO NOT send your address. If you already did, then they are going to send you fake checks. DO NOT cash them -- if anything comes through UPS, FedEx, etc and you did not order it or recognize the sender, refuse delivery. If they send it throguh normal mail, then hand it over to your local post office and tell them to forward to the Postal Inspector. With your address they can target you with fake lottery scams, reshipping scams, money mule scams, etc. So do not believe anything you get in the mail that you won a prize, do not accept any packages from people you do not know or did not order, etc



There is NO daughter, no tutor, nobody in the UK. There is a scammer who is trying to get you to commit felony money laundering through your personal bank account and ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law. They will send you a money order for $2500 instead of $50 then say their secretary made a mistake and that you should just deposit it, keep $300 in advance for your time then wire $2200 to their 'travel agent' or some other third party through Western Union



Also, that verification code is not from Craiglist - that's a scam to get you to sign up for a premium rate service that you cannot cancel, another way for the scammer to make money from you. If you text that number, you will be paying up to $5 to send and receive all texts.



These scammers use so many aliases that they can't keep them straight -- and Suzie Wong is the name of a movie character from the 1960s



What you can do to get this person off your back is write back to say that you have a family emergency and have to travel out of the country tomorrow so you will not be able to accept the job as you may be gone for 6 months. Say that you have already informed your neighbor and left a note on your door that if any packages come for you that they should be returned to sender, so if she already sent the money order, it will be returned to her



Your biggest problem is that now you have responded your email as been added to a "mugu" list and you'll be spammed to death
This is a complete and total scam. So far, all they have is your address, right? Don't give them ANYTHING else. Ignore any further communication from them or from that area code.



You could try reporting them to Craigslist -- although I doubt they'll do anything about it.