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Piano Lessons Scam Clients - Mr.John, wellijohn1@yahoo.it

Classified Ad Scams:
Piano Lesson Scam Clients

Scams and scammers using these names: Mr.John, wellijohn1@yahoo.it, Italy
"i am Mr.John I need a Private Lessons for my daughter {Kelly), I got your advert while surfing through the internet and I really want my child to be taught by you. "

Are you looking to offer piano lessons? Did "Mr.John" claiming to be from Italy contact you? Note that he says: "i am Mr.John I need a Private Lessons for my daughter {Kelly), I got your advert while surfing through the internet and I really want my child to be taught by you. ".  That's a clue to a scam right there!

Here are the clues that this is a scam:

1. First, you will notice the syntax and grammar.  Often, is it not pathetically bad, it's just plain strange. It looks like it was written by someone who is not a native English-speaker, and writes very rarely in English. This is very typical of scammers, who largely are in Nigeria and have little formal education and probably none in English.
2. Next, he wants to write a check in excess of the required amount. Why? That makes no sense at all. If he hasn't got a bank account, he could always pay in cash or get a money order.
3. Then, he wants the "excess" from the check sent BACK to him or to other individuals, often in many different locations, and always by Western Union or Money Gram! Alarm bells should be going off by now.  Western Union wires and Moneygrams are not only untraceable, they're irretrievable.  Once the recipient picks them up (which can be done at ANY Western Union office in the world), the money is gone, gone, gone!
4. And then there are the little clues; signs like the strange name and location changes.  Maybe, first he's "David Rapheal", then he's suddenly Shawn Nickolas, supposedly in England, yet the first name has an American spelling and the last name is spelled more like an Eastern European or Germanic origin.
5. The scammers NEVER can meet in person.  They may have a $50,000 boat to sell to you or want to buy a $45,000 car from you, but somehow they are always "out of the country" on business, in in the army, whatever.  In the real world, anyone buying or selling something for more than a few hundred dollars, wants to see it first.  And especially when renting a house or apartment!
6. The scammers typically ramble on about issues that are irrelevant to such a sale or rental; such as, how they are doing this for charity, or recently moved to the UK, or are traveling in Africa right now.  You as a seller / landlord, don't and shouldn't care about these issues: you are trying to find a legitimate buyer or renter for your item at a fair market price.  The scammer knows this and is merely trying to cloud the issue and provide excuses for not complying with the basic requirements of a sale. He's also trying to engender trust; one of the key elements of any con game.
7. Scammers frequently refer to "trust", "faith" and God; in ways that no rational person in western Society would ever do in a business transaction, as in, "I know I can trust you", or "my faith in God tells me to enter this agreement with you".
8. Look at the huge number of misspellings, weird use of capital letters, poor punctuation and made-up words.  Again, this is typical of the scammer filth who live and operate in Nigeria.

An actual email that illustrate this type of CraigsList scam:

Any highlighted passages below are to draw your attention to typical scam clues:

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Email 1 - from the victim:

The email went through to my spam filter, where I found it. I get loads of these from all over the place. They are all yahoo ISPs. I have passed many on to the Greater Manchester Police but I am still getting them. These are attempts to gain access to my bank account. I am a piano teacher. I replied to the first one, which came from America or said so because I get lots of bona fide enquiries for lessons. This is why it is so serious. No pupils would ever come for lessons more than once a week and certainly not for 2 hours. I would like them to be stopped from doing this. Can u help?

Email 2 - from the scammer:

Subject: Piano Lessons
From: wellijohn1@yahoo.it

Hello, Good day to you over there,i am Mr.John I need a Private Lessons for my daughter {Kelly), I got your advert while surfing through the internet and I really want my child to be taught by you.

Kelly is 16 year old and easily catch up. Although,I understand you are in {UK} but I 've arranged with my cousin sister living there that my daughter is coming to stay with her for his period of tutoring and she had agreed with me,

I want you to get back to me with following details:

1)your present residence address and telephone number

2)total cost of tutoring for One month( 2 hours per day)

3)your years of teaching experience.

Payment Cheque , looking forward to hearing from you soonest.

Regards

Inviato da Yahoo! Mail. La casella di posta intelligente. http://it.docs.yahoo.com/mail/overview/index.html