New scam requesting tutors

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 09:52:15 -0700

The following email is targeting colleges and universities. See the initial and secondary response from the scammer.

Initial contact email:

Good Morning

My name is Valerie Weiss today I was surfing the internet and I found your email contact on the Dept University's website. I am presently looking for tutor for my son Ethan, we live here in England and he has completed high school last summer back home in Slovakia. He has been ice-hockey camping for the past month and we feel it is a forward decision for us to get him a tutor to in physics as he wants to be an engineer.

He scored a B in Physics recently in his Cambridge O"Level exam and we are hoping his sporting activities will not deter he academic pursuit.

Let me know your hourly rates and also time during the week and on week ends you will be available to coach him (total number of hours you can use with him a week). Please let us hear from you soon as he would be in Canada in a couple of days/week to stay with my sister in-law for the time been and I will very much appreciate it very much if you can introduce me to someone qualified in the case you are not available.

Thanks

Valerie﻿

After a grad student replied, they received the following response:

Good Morning <Grad Student Name>

I am particularly pleased to hear from you, my husband and I have gone over this, we are very happy because we know Ethan will be in safe hands.

Ethan will be in the states in the coming week. I want you to work with him and open him up to the idea of college education as I believe you are clearly a professional in this field .

I want you to know that my husband and i had initially hired a private tutor for Ethan and he was supposed to tutor him for two months preparing him for his SAT test again, this is because we weren't sure he passed the test, we already paid him upfront for but just before we concluded on lesson days and time, he lost his wife and decided to quit teaching and take proper care of his family but he has long agreed to have my money sent to any alternative tutor who'll be handling Ethan with his lessons. Luckily for us Ethan passed his SAT and scored 1320 points I was so surprised.

As we speak now Ethan doesn't need SAT coaching anymore and since you are his new tutor the payment you will receiving is the amount of $2,950, I'll need you to have your costs for Ethan's lessons as agreed at ($450) deducted from the funds received and have what's left sent out via western union to Ethan's travel arrangements as the funds will be used in securing his flight tickets and BTA (Basic Travel Allowance) as this is highly required upon his arrival at the Canadian airport according to the Canadian Immigration rules and also required as proof of funds.

I know you would ask the question why cant my sister in-law handle this for us? As we speak is she recently put to bed with some complications in Sweden, due to be back in another 5 weeks or so, her house keeper is of Spanish origin with no knowledge of the internet,s he understands and speaks little English.I hope you can understand that it would be a whole lot more difficult if I were to ask her to help me here since I dont even speak Spanish at all.

If this OK, I'll need you to provide me with your full name as to be written on the payment, your contact address(where the payment will be sent to and your phone number and I'll instruct to have the payment issued and sent out to your location asap.

OK then have a great day and get back to me and i can make relevant arrangements duly then.Also anytime or day of the week that suits you best for lessons works just fine with us as Ethan's schedule for now is fully open.

Regards,

Valerie