I have been getting a lot of e-mail recently that follows these general lines:
Dear,
Good day to you over there,i am Mr Lily James I want a PrivateTeacher for my son (Josy James), I got your advert while searching for Private Teacher through the internet and I really want my son to be taught by you. Josy is 16 year old and easily catch up. Although,I understand you are in (U.S.A) but I ‘ve arranged with my cousin sister resides there in (U.S.A) that my son is coming to stay with her for her period of tutoring and she had agreed with me,I want you to get back to me with following details:
1)What parts of (U.S.A) you are presently
2)Total cost of tutoring for Two months(2 hours per day)
3)Your years of teaching experience.
Looking forward to hearing from you soonest.
Thank you.
Mr Lily James….
Sound like spam? You’d better believe it. I especially like how it’s not even addressed to anyone in particular! The scary thing is, I’ve had several colleagues actually respond to this nasty garbage, and the scam quickly becomes evident. You send them money so they can send you money, blah, blah… yeah, right.
I find it interesting that some spam crooks out there decided that it was worthwhile to target music teachers!
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These have been going on for a long time now. My wife gets ’em all the time from her piano teaching stuff. It is appalling. I first noticed these back in 2006 and they have only gotten worse: http://www.sanbeiji.com/archives/686
What I love about these is despite the fact that they say they researched you, found your ad on the internet, you still have to tell them a) what part of the U.S. You’re from, and b) how much teaching experience you have. “I want my son to learn from you, oh, but you’ve only got one years teaching experience. Never mind then” – yeah right.
Thankfully, they haven’t moved onto Australian teachers yet… but give them time…