Paper Moon, House of Games, The Grifters, The Sting; these are some of my favorite movies. All about the art of the con.
Con men in the movies are actually a bit likeable and cool. With a sleight of hand and the wink of an eye, they merrily take you for a buck. Or a thousand. There's something almost nostalgic about con men. Clever, inventive and bold, con men embody something of the American criminal spirit.
Con is short for confidence. Con man, flim flam, grifter, hustler, scam artist -- there are many names but one end result -- someone gets bamboozled. It happens to the best of us at least once. If you think you haven't been conned, you have.
E.M. Forster once said, "only connect." Every day we walk past homeless people on the street, avoiding their eyes and musky smell. We want to help, but we're a little afraid. They might be crazy. They will just buy more booze or drugs.
But the street grifter is different. He or she is calm, relaxed, dressed normally and experiencing a very mundane problem, one you can relate to. It could be you needing ten bucks, right? They've already gathered up some money -- see, here it is -- so just ten more? They lost their cell phone. They need a cab. They are out of gas and there are kids waiting at home. C'mon, man, please?
I once gave a very well dressed woman twenty dollars to help her fix the flat tire of the car that her (unseen) first graders were waiting in. They'd headed out for a field trip and she was chaperoning when they got a flat. Oh no! AAA could help but she had to come up with a fifty dollar co-pay. She'd collected twenty so far, see? She just needed thirty more dollars. I'd have given her more but I only had a twenty on me. I went my merry way that day, filled with a glow of having helped out. Until I walked by the restaurant three days later and saw the same woman earnestly telling someone her flat tire, field trip, AAA story. She didn't recognize me. Or if she did, she didn't skip a beat.
Con men sell what the mark wants to feel: generous, lucky, abundant.
Now, the world wide web has created an unlimited landscape of opportunity for the flim flam man. Access to every sucker ever born. A world in which the con doesn't need a disguise, a shill or even a permanent address. Finding a mark is easy: just throw out the spam net and reel 'em in. How do you hide the evidence? There's never a face-to-face. Will you get caught? Nope.
I have always thought myself way, way too smart for an internet scam. The Nigerian prince thing? Puh-lease. Just like you, I have seen it all. The estate representative trying to get in touch with you, the lost relative, so you can collect your inheritance. The good friend of yours who lost their wallet and credit card while in London (or Scotland, or Paris) and can you send some cash ASAP to help them out? Hurry! You need to send in your password because your account has been temporarily suspended! You feel your heart stop for just a moment - it HAS?
Most spammer/scammers use language and grammar that is so obviously bad that even the most off-handed person would catch it. I have often thought that if one of these online internet thieves simply hired a decent writer, their take would skyrocket. But money is being made, hand over fist, proving that the finesse of a writer like me is entirely unnecessary.
Unless you're trying to scam a person like me.
I am moving overseas in a few months and I want to have a secondary income outside of consulting and blogging. More than that, I want an adventure. I found a website that listed teaching jobs all over the world. Fascinated, I began to look into the listings.
The past year has been without a doubt the hardest, most emotional, stressful year of my life. I won't go into details. It just has. I have been under enormous stress. Stress that would be resolved if only....
And there it was. The opportunity of a lifetime. A private British day school in Valencia, Spain was hiring. British Day School? That's a bit out of my wheelhouse. I teach screenwriting workshops regularly but I don't have a teaching certificate much less a TEFL. But -- the website was stunning. The school's campus was nestled in the hills outside of Valencia. Housing is provided. Medical coverage is provided. Airfare, visas -- all given. TEFL doesn't matter. You can earn one while there. On the school's dime and time. It was an offer too good to be true! I knew I wasn't exactly the right person for the job but I applied anyway.
It didn't take long to hear back. I had been selected for a secondary interview! What I'd have to do is to write an essay about why I'd make a good teacher. The essay contained about ten questions, ranging from how I'd handle discipline in the class to how I evaluate homework and design a curriculum. Design a curriculum? That struck me as a little odd. Schools should use a curriculum already and the teacher adopts it. But can you imagine living in Spain?! And it got better -- no Spanish language knowledge was necessary!
I heard nothing. For three weeks I waited. Until I found it. My acceptance letter and contract. It had gotten into my junk folder. Was the job still available, I wondered, feverishly? I emailed back that I was so sorry but I hadn't seen the acceptance and was the job still available?
I heard nothing. I emailed again. Dear Magical Spain Job People, I really want this job! Please call my cell phone if the job is still available. The next day the phone rang. It was them! Yes, the job was still available! I mean, this is what I gathered, anyway. The call was from an unknown overseas number and the woman on the other end sounded as if she'd been born in Hungary, learned to sing in Japan and then put an Irish accent over the top of it all. In fact, the only words I really heard were: email (garble) job (garble) available (garble) send in the deposit for the housing.
I HAD THE JOB! I was moving to Spain in three weeks! What a whirlwind! What of my car, my possessions, my pets and my friends and family? I called everyone I knew and told them. They were thrilled! But... wasn't this all happening a little fast? If you got the job, why did no one get in touch with you via phone over a matter so important? But I was going to Spain! I'd get paid to be there! I wondered how long it would take on the bus between Valencia and Barcelona. I wondered how quickly I'd learn Spanish and how much I was allowed to ship out with me.
Then a concerned friend showed it to me. FraudWatchers.com listed the same letter of acceptance and contract that I had received. Verbatim. My world ground to a humiliated, screeching halt. I'd been played.
How could this happen? Going over the particulars, every single red flag not only stood out, it snapped in the breeze. Sending the money for the deposit on housing was always front and center. I noticed but ignored it. The not needing a TEFL. The pay rate to hours worked ratio was way too good to be true. The fact that I have no teaching certificate whatsoever - what was I thinking?!
I was thinking that to live and work in Spain would be an amazing experience. I was thinking that I would make a great teacher and that the pay and health insurance was too good to pass up. I was thinking that Spain is not far from Israel and I could go to my beloved adopted country on weekends. I was feeling adventurous and special, like a globe-trotting wild woman. I would go to Italy! And France! You could see my underpants!
It was all a lie. The school is a real school. Or, it would appear so. But the scammers put a hyphen in the URL of the school's name. Tiny, imperceptible. But it hijacked the URL and took it to one that mimicked the real school's and diverted emails to the lady with the whacked out accent in wherever she is.
I read once that the way to hurt spammers is to take up their time. To answer their email with a lot of questions so that if they want to reel in the mark, you make them work for it. You, in essence, scam them!
So fueled by shame and anger, I did it.
I'm so excited about the job! I just have a few questions though:
*Do they use pesos in Spain? Should I change my dollars for pesos at the airport?
*Or do they use pound sterling, like in the rest of Europe?
*Can I get some pictures of the housing, particularly the bathroom facilities?
*I am a vegan - does the dining hall support that lifestyle? Can I get a sample menu?
I thought of many more hilarious, stupid questions, ways that I could suck up time from these jerks. But they never answered. Like the Grifters, their emails bounced, the fake URL went away; they are gone forever.
I was angry but much more than that, I was embarrassed. Me, the woman who chuckles at Nigerian prince scams. Me, the well-read writer and thinker. Me.
If it seems to good to be true -- check in on your wants. Are you in an emotional or financial space in which you need or want a fantastic opportunity quickly? Do a Google search and type in the name of the opportunity/school/business and then add the word "scam" after it. If anyone has been had by these people before, it'll be online, trust me. There are also sites like Fraud Watchers that you can refer to.
After awhile, the shame gradually abated, leaving me keenly aware of my humanity. I wanted a job in an exotic location, I wanted to be paid huge sums of money for doing very little in very few hours. I wanted to be flown to Spain. I wanted. And nobody is too smart to want.
Follow Julie Gray on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Julie_Gray
To specifically target people already in desperate situations, and not only promise them help that will never materialize; but make their fragile situation worse... how do people *do* that to each other?
Even scamming someone with medical quackery isn't quite as bad, as the victims aren't being helped by traditional avenues or they wouldn't be willing to risk it. But job or debt scamming, man - you're not just attacking them, you're possibly destroying an entire *family's* life.
How many people in this writer's position might have not only sent in the deposit, but moved out of their apartment to raise the money from the security deposit? Or who's wife or husband would have quit their part time job and trained a replacement in preparation for the move? Turned down *real* offers made during the scam?
Anyway, don't trust information you only get from one source; particular online. Make sure the evidence for something, particularly if it requires *you* to risk something, could not have been funded by what you're being asked to risk alone. And keep in mind that no legitimate job will ever ask you for money up front, for any reason. Even if the job turns out to be real, the outfit behind it clearly has no regard for professionalism if they start your working relationship by suggesting *you* pay *them*.
"Design a curriculum? That struck me as a little odd. Schools should use a curriculum already and the teacher adopts it."
Asking you if you can "design a curriculum" isn't an odd question, at all. School systems, as well as universities, don't just go out and buy a curriculum when they need one. Teachers and administrators work in tandem to not only create curricula, but to tweak and maintain curricula. A static curriculum is an ineffective, even dead, curriculum. A school's curriculum is subject to changing legislation, previous test scores, the objectives of departments or districts, and many other factors. So, teachers don't as you say, simply "adopt" the curriculum; teachers create the curriculum. As a teacher, it would not be your job to create the curriculum alone. You would work with your other colleagues (and sometimes, consultants) to accomplish this. So, rather than thinking that the curriculum should just be "there," you've got to consider how it got there to begin with. It's not store-manufactured, or something to which you merely renew your subscription.
So, this scam wasn't even a good scam because it wouldn't have worked with anyone even minimally qualified (academically speaking) to teach. My point? You're not stupid. You're just weren't qualified. Even a graduate student, or perhaps, undergraduate student in education would have been suspicious.
I was/am very embarrassed! Although I did catch it before a red cent left my bank account, so there's that.
I was brave enough to write about such a dumb mistake as a warning to others who think they are too smart or literate to get conned. Or too embarrassed to admit it.
My life is an open book - I am a cautionary tale! :)
I'd be pretty hard to be taken advantage of with those rules in mind. Of course, with my friends, it's like they WANT to be scammed, the way they throw their numbers at people... then they get mad at me when I point out an obviously fake scam.
1. How are you able to live overseas legally longterm just teaching writing workshops? That's not exactly an in demand skill by foreign countries. Or are you saying that it is merely a goal and you want to use teaching as a vehicle to accomplish your goal?
2. There are well known legal double checks on teaching overseas. Dave's ESL Cafe for one. She didn't check on the school in question?
3. Was she going to try to go over there to work without a work visa? As someone who has lived and worked, including teaching, overseas, when she didn't receive a contract to then take down to the consulate to get the visa processed that didn't raise red flags? One can be arrested for working, including teaching, in a given country without legal authorization. I actually worked at one school (legally with a work visa) that got raided and several of the teachers imprisoned for working illegally in that country. I quit that school soon after.
There are a lot of scam schools out there who pull lots of different shenanigans to screw people, too. Always double check what you're getting into.
3. I don't think she was. I don't know the rules for each EU member state, but I don't think we have "work visas" per se. Instead, after you sign the contract, your employer has to apply for a work permit on your behalf, assuming they are authorized to hire non-EU nationals. Assuming Spain follows this format, she wouldn't have needed to take the paperwork to the embassy, since the employer would have initiated the process with the Spanish INS. But for that to happen, she would have had to sign and return the contract, and then they would have collected her information. Fortunately, she figured out what was going on before wasting a ton of money on certified copies and basically handing her identity over.
I guess a key piece of advice for overseas folks looking for work in the EU is that there are protectionist laws in place which require employers to 1. be authorized to hire non-EU workers, and 2. prove that the position could not be filled by a citizen or EU national. Unless your field is highly specialized or you're fluent in the local language, it will be not be easy to find a job, so be suspicious and research your potential employer thoroughly.
A great, fun website for wreaking revenge on internet scammers is http://www.419eater.com/ named thus after Article 419 in the Nigerian criminal code, against fraud.