Better Living Through Psychology

Email scammers using a variation of the 419 scam have started targeting professionals such as therapists and interpreters.

A couple of days ago I received this email:

fredpawlak@yahoo.co.uk
+447024099618

The language struck me as somewhat idiosyncratic, but not unlikely if the writer was someone for whom English is a second language – a reasonable assumption to make given the surname used. When I get enquiries for assistance with mental health problems from people outside my registration jurisdiction (i.e. the state of Victoria, Australia), I usually suggest the person contact their local Psychology association or registration or licensing board. However, like any compassionate professional dealing with the parent of a young person in distress, I didn’t want to put the gentleman writing to me through any more trouble than necessary. And for all I knew, he had fairly plausible reasons for not seeking help in Singapore or the UK: lack of local knowledge, distance, in the case of Singapore perhaps a lack of depth in the local practice community.

Consequently I replied to the email explaining my usual preference to talk with the “identified client” before giving a firm undertaking to proceed with an appointment. About eight hours later, I received this reply:

Hello Julian,
How are you and how has your day been? Wonderful I guess. Thanks for your swift response and I am so glad to read from with the detailed information. As I have earlier written, My son who is 19 years of Age and he speaks english fluently so i think it would be of great advantage to communication. He has heightened fears about people despite his Age, situations which He cannot face, and He continually feels low, most often with many complicated symptoms like poor sleep, negativity, deep anger, self-depression.
After reading your mail, I would prefer a Consultation of 60minutes a day and it would be held 2 times a week at your own scheduled time.
I am willing that I make the arrangements with you prior to His arrival because next week most probably, I will be leaving Singapore for some important business obligation. I am making contacts with a professional guardian who will be His driver throughout this Excursions / Consultations. He will be bringing Him over for the Consultation on the scheduled days. I hope to establish a contact between you and Him as soon as possible. Below are my own calculations for payment:

AU$XX0 for a Consultation / 60mins

i.e. AU$XX0 x 2 time in a week = AU$XX0
i.e. AU$XX0 x 4 weeks = AU$XX0
Total  Approx = AU$XXX0

I would Issue out an Upfront payment of AU$XXX0 before His arrival, so I want to know if it is OK. I expect to read from you with the following information so that I can have my Financier issue out the payment on my behalf.

Full Name: -
Full Contact Address: -
Phone Number {Home & Mobile}: -
Age: -

Please, I will want to count on you for this because I am a very busy person, I am doing this as part of my responsibility towards my children because I am a single parent and I hardly have time for them. I want to plead with you to make this a successful and adventurous Excursion / Consultation for my son.
Anticipating your swift response. Have a wonderful weekend ahead and my humble regards to you and your loved ones.
Kind Regards,
Fredrick Pawlak..

Address: – XXXXX XXXXXX#01-02,
XX XXXX XXXX Street, XXXXX, Singapore

The offer to pay upfront was the giveaway. I had indicated in my email that we might not go further than the first two or three sessions if I judged that my approach was unlikely to benefit the “client” – a precaution I routinely put in place when starting with a new client. So why the urgency to pay upfront for the whole episode?

To reassure myself that the enquiry was genuine, I googled the writer’s name. Nothing. So next I searched for phrases from the email. When I fed some of the details into 419scam.org it showed that the phone number, which I assumed was a UK-based landline, was in fact a UK-registered mobile which would divert to another country.  Jackpot! Thanks to Google Translate I was able to establish that German interpreters had been targeted earlier this year using a similar approach: an urgent requirement for work to be done over a brief period with payment upfront.

The way this particular scam works is that the fraudsters overpay you with a dud cheque or traveller’s cheque. Then before you cash it or draw on it and find out it’s worthless, they contact you requiring you to urgently refund them the overpayment amount. Enough honest people will fall for this that it’s worth their while sifting through the ones who ignore the initial approach or delay reimbursing the overpayment until the cheque has cleared.

Takeaway message

Vet your clients before you book them in.

Insist on a phone contact (for your own safety do this in preference to face-to-face meetings) before agreeing to take on a client who has contacted you via email.

If someone offers to pre-pay sessions and wants to send funds via the web, or for that matter to post cheques to you, ensure it’s for only one or two sessions, and then wait for the funds to be drawable in your account before you do anything like refund an overpayment.

And finally, if you suspect anything is too good to be true or it just ‘feels wrong’ search www.419scam.org or in Australia www.scamwatch.gov.au for phrases or email addresses and phone numbers from the emails you’ve received.