When a customer isn't real (family reunion scam)

I regularly get contacts for party / event / reunion parties and want to eagerly book me. Will pay for my travel. Below is an example of one encounter. My question is what are they up to? They want to pay me by credit card. How can I lose from that. Does anyone have experience with this and what they are up to?? (they often times have poor writing skills) Here is the dialogue:

The prospective customer write to me:
"Jason xxxxxx. How are you? I'll like to know your free available date in November for my family reunion party. Its a (5 hours photo coverage) I want family portraits done for all the families coming together. Do you accept credit card payment and i got your contact on some recommendation on facebook. I'll look forward to read from you ASAP."

I respond to him with simple questions. He responds back to me but does not give me a location (city, state or date)

"Thanks for the swift response. There isnt a specific date yet. I want you to check if you have 4th or 11th of November open? If you do have the dates open i want you to work on the estimate cost for the 5 hours photo coverage from 4pm-9pm, and 6-16x20 prints family photo portraits because we have 6 different families coming together. The event is going to be both indoor and outdoor shot that will be in a DVD or USB with the right to prints anytime. The 16x20 will be a group photo for individual family. The event will be held locally here about an hour drive from your location, i will cover the travel expenses. I'll make down payment in advance to book the date. I'll look forward to hear back from you ASAP."

WAF wrote in post #18480032
I regularly get contacts for party / event / reunion parties and want to eagerly book me. Will pay for my travel. Below is an example of one encounter. My question is what are they up to? They want to pay me by credit card. How can I lose from that. Does anyone have experience with this and what they are up to?? (they often times have poor writing skills) Here is the dialogue:

The prospective customer write to me:
"Jason xxxxxx. How are you? I'll like to know your free available date in November for my family reunion party. Its a (5 hours photo coverage) I want family portraits done for all the families coming together. Do you accept credit card payment and i got your contact on some recommendation on facebook. I'll look forward to read from you ASAP."

I respond to him with simple questions. He responds back to me but does not give me a location (city, state or date)

"Thanks for the swift response. There isnt a specific date yet. I want you to check if you have 4th or 11th of November open? If you do have the dates open i want you to work on the estimate cost for the 5 hours photo coverage from 4pm-9pm, and 6-16x20 prints family photo portraits because we have 6 different families coming together. The event is going to be both indoor and outdoor shot that will be in a DVD or USB with the right to prints anytime. The 16x20 will be a group photo for individual family. The event will be held locally here about an hour drive from your location, i will cover the travel expenses. I'll make down payment in advance to book the date. I'll look forward to hear back from you ASAP."

When you get questionable things like this, pick two or three consecutive words that seem odd, put double quotes around them, and search google with that adding the word scam... In this case, the odd words that struck me were "5 hours photo coverage", so I searched for that plus the word scam.

http://dfwci.com …-the-family-reunion-scam/
http://billferrisphoto​.com/2015/07/01/scamme​r-time/
http://www.boomshotstu​dio.com/Blog/ScammersF​amily-Reunion

WAF wrote in post #18480032
They want to pay me by credit card. How can I lose from that.

It isn't their credit card, that's how. They have the number that came from a stolen card or was otherwise obtained wrongly.

You noted the poor writing skills. The writing skills are poor in specific ways that mark the writer as not a native English speaker. "If you do have the dates open i want you to work on the estimate cost . . . I'll make down payment in advance to book the date."

Small businesses get hit with these all the time. If you'd pursued this "offer," sooner or later you would have been asked to send a check to another vendor for some amount less than the amount you were promised. The amount of your check is what you'd lose.

It is easy, I am a photographer, not an event planner. It is the event planner that should be getting all the payments together and paying the other parties. This is why this scam is stupid. The photographer isn't the project manager or event planner, they are just another vendor being paid for a service for the vent. If you operate this way, you are much safer.

I would almost consider playing along and accepting their payment. Contact the CC provider with the info, they will retract the payment and mark the number invalid rendering the scammer with one less card to use.

Take a 25% (or whatever is currently traditional) deposit nonrefundable up front. If they wont do that, its likely a scam?

Ive done one family reunion. It wasnt that bad, but crooked methods of scamming like facebook, craig$list, etc didnt exist at the time.

Andrew

ShutterKlick wrote in post #18480165
Take a 25% (or whatever is currently traditional) deposit nonrefundable up front. If they wont do that, its likely a scam?

Ive done one family reunion. It wasnt that bad, but crooked methods of scamming like facebook, craig$list, etc didnt exist at the time.

Andrew

That doesn't work here, this type of scam will actually pay you much more than 25%, more like all of it up front. 1) It isn't their money, 2) They hope you send a form of cash back, and 3) you will have a chargeback on the funds you received, plus you would be out anything you sent out to somebody else via cash. I cannot believe ANYONE would fall for this, but obviously it works or they would go to a different scam.

It is the traditional pay in advance/pay forward scam. They pay you an amount in advance but ask you to forward a smaller amount on to the designer/caterer/whate​ver - which is of course an account they have access too. Because you have been paid in advance you assume it can't be a scam so you pay out the money. Then a few weeks later it turns out the cheque was from a fake bank account or the CC was a cloned copy or one that was fraudulently applied for using personal info gained from the Experian hack. Your bank deducts the fraudulent payment from your account but by that time your money has gone into the other account - so you end up out of pocket.

WAF wrote in post #18480032
There isnt a specific date yet.

I want you to check if you have 4th or 11th of November

seems specific to me! usually, family reunions are planned well in advance, those dates are just around the corner. seem suspicious to me, if you're not hard up for business, skip it!

I believe we have already established, multiple times, that this is a well-known scam.

Thanks to all photographers for your advice. Adrian

They pay you more than you are asking and then ask you to refund the overpayment in the form of a cashiers check or some other form of payment that you will never see again.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #18480043
http://dfwci.com …-the-family-reunion-scam/
http://billferrisphoto​.com/2015/07/01/scamme​r-time/
http://www.boomshotstu​dio.com/Blog/ScammersF​amily-Reunion

OhLook wrote in post #18480053
Small businesses get hit with these all the time. If you'd pursued this "offer," sooner or later you would have been asked to send a check to another vendor for some amount less than the amount you were promised. The amount of your check is what you'd lose.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #18480178
They hope you send a form of cash back, and 3) you will have a chargeback on the funds you received, plus you would be out anything you sent out to somebody else via cash.

Dan Marchant wrote in post #18480292
It is the traditional pay in advance/pay forward scam. They pay you an amount in advance but ask you to forward a smaller amount on to the designer/caterer/whate​ver - which is of course an account they have access too.

mikeinctown wrote in post #18480729
They pay you more than you are asking and then ask you to refund the overpayment in the form of a cashiers check or some other form of payment that you will never see again.

Okay, I think we have this well established at this point. Perhaps its time to lock the thread.

Coming from someone who JUST got into photography, I'm very thankful for sites like this that provide wisdom and experience to people like me. I honestly think I would've jumped on that as jobs are few and far between when getting started.

The single most sage advice I can give is to take groups of words that are not very commonly put together in normal written form or English, put them in double quotes, and google that sentence with the word scam added...

This is the first thing I do on anything that seems questionable from someone that strikes up an internet deal with me.

As the criminal element gets smarter, it gets a bit more difficult. Between rising prices and taxes, and the increase of scams and identify theft, I fear what the landscape will look like financially for many in the coming years.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #18480747
The single most sage advice I can give is to take groups of words that are not very commonly put together in normal written form or English, put them in double quotes, and google that sentence with the word scam added...

What advice do you have for photographers whose native language isn't English? Some of them can't spot strange wording.