Rafa Lombardino*
There's a new twist to Nigerian Scams. Instead of trying to lure people who dream big with a winning lottery ticket or an African prince's inheritance, on-line scam artists are now targeting hard-working professionals in the Translation & Interpreting industry.
The plot is pretty similar: fake client sends a check and intentionally overpays the translator, who is then asked to deposit the complete amount and send back the difference through Western Union. A few days later, the translator receives a call from the bank saying that the check never cleared, while the wire transfer was completed and the so-called “difference” has already left the translator's account.
Scams of this caliber target beginners and experienced professionals, freelancer and companies alike. Daniel Shamebo, with Languages Translation Services, once fell victim to this kind of on-line deception and had to pay his translators and record a loss in his company books. “The business was good for our Japanese and Chinese translators and we paid them in full from our own pocket.”
Lisa Siegel, with Alisa International Spanish Translations, has over 15 years of experience as a Spanish translator and is a member of the ATA. She was once scammed by a certain “Jane Spencer” and reported her to the Internet Fraud Complaint Center.
“There's also this guy called 'Jack Brown' who sends you AIDS-related material and tells you he pretty much wants to educate kids and that your translation is going to save the world,” she says of another scammer who contacted her. “Once you mention you're waiting for his deposit to clear before you get started, you never hear from him again.”
More recently, Lisa and Daniel were part of a group of about 45 translators whom “Mr. Hanks Martins” tried to scam around Christmas time in 2009. They were contacted by Michele Lemieux-Madison, a freelance translator since 2002 who emailed the group to discuss the issue and try to track down the fake client. “I got all these names because 'Hanks' inadvertently attached the email addresses to the message he sent me with the file he needed translated,” she explains. “I already warned one of my translation groups.”
Surviving the financial crisis
“Hanks” requested an English into Spanish translation for a slide presentation titled “Surviving the Financial Crisis,” which he would use for a lecture he would be giving in early 2010 during a conference in Romania. Even though Spanish is not an official language in that European country, the discrepancy at first wasn't evident enough to raise any flags.
“I guess he found a way to make it through the economic crisis by cheating other people!” jokes Dahlia Ferrer, who is a translator with a BA in International Security and Conflict Resolution, making a reference to the ironic subject of the fake translation request.
Price for the complete assignment ranged between $300 and $1,500 USD and most translators asked for a 50% advance to start working on the job. “Hanks” said his associate “Isaac Hunter” would make the payment, but a few weeks later the project deadline was approaching and there was no check in sight. Some translators even took the initiative of contacting the client to wonder what was going on.
Always polite, “Hanks” apologized and said that “Mr. Hunter” had been unable to make the payment because his secretary had family issues (a sick child at the hospital,) but the promised advance payment should soon be on its way.
That was when most of the translators on the list received a $4,000 check, an amount that was well higher than the average quote. There was no return address and when asked about the overpayment, “Hanks” explained that the secretary must have made a mistake, since “Isaac” was supposed to send one check to the translator and another one to the travel agent responsible for making arrangements for his trip to Romania.
For most translators based in the west coast, the travel agent's name was “Sandra Evans” and the fake address to her office was in the middle of a highway in Boulevard, California. Other translators received an address for “Robert Donald” in Gordon, Georgia. Clara Fernández, a translator who has been in business since 1985, received a North Carolina address for the supposed travel agency.
Off the script
The translators noticed that “Hanks” changed his tone once they started asking questions. Apparently, he had some sort of a “script” he was following, since the details of the story were identical to those involved. When he received some unexpected inquiries, though, his writing skills in English would get worse.
“He isn't the brightest bulb on the block, because the check was visually questionable,” explains Peonia Kempenich, a freelance translator and medical interpreter. “Upon further scrutinizing, it was immediately apparent to me that this was a fraudulent check. Although it claimed to be drawn on Indymac bank, it used Wells Fargo as some sort of affiliate bank, but they failed to capitalize the 'W' in the bank name...”
Some of the translators investigated the matter a little further and verified that Indymac had been seized by the FDIC in 2008 and later bought out by OneWest. “I was having a funny feeling too,” Nicholas Pino agrees. “When I took the check to the bank, I was advised to let them look it over and they confirmed almost instantly that it was not real.”
Nicholas had actually started working on the translation. “I didn't want to believe it because I was trying to break into the translation market, and I even asked 'Hanks' if he had found me through a website that I was using to try to get translation jobs... I don't know, I want this guy brought to justice. Who knows how many people he may have taken already!?”
Scanned check kindly provided by Angeles Gomez
“I'm in the hole by $4,000!”
Ana was indeed a victim of the scam orchestrated by “Hanks,” because she followed the instructions and wired the money back to “Robert Donald.”
“I am embarrassed to admit it, but he took $4,000 from me. I paid someone so that I could translate a twenty-something page document into Spanish —which I'm sure he deleted as soon as I sent it to him. I put so much work into it!” the beginner translator reveals. “I do not translate full time. I have very little experience doing this professionally, and have no plans to ever accept any jobs again unless they are for local schools or organizations. This experience has left such a bad taste in my mouth.”
According to Ana, she sent the funds back to the fake travel agent because her bank initially told her the check had cleared. “My sister let me use her account, because I do not currently have a checking account. They made us wait a week, but then cleared the deposit and let us make the withdrawal for the funds that we wired to him. About a week later, the check had been returned, and I was in the hole by $4,000.”
Ana filed a police report, but she doesn't believe the investigation will go any further. “A police officer told me once this starts happening around the country, it becomes an FBI issue.”
“I told the authorities that someone is sending the checks here in the States, but local police still said there was nothing they could do,” literary translator Shannon Cooper adds. “Translators are important, and it's not fair that someone is targeting us like this!”
Why the T&I Industry?
Translation services nowadays are mostly provided over the Internet. Freelance translators and interpreters receive a job description by email and negotiate the assignment with the client. Some paperwork may be signed at the client's request, the final translated document is sent back by email with a copy of the invoice for services rendered, and payment usually follows 15 to 45 days later.
Advance payment is not often requested by T&I professionals, and mostly only accepted by individuals who need some private documents translated, since large companies have the accounting resources to track their language-related service requests and make payments in a monthly basis. Because of special arrangements with private clients, translators and interpreters must be even more alert than usual to avoid working for free.
“I sensed 'Hanks' was a scammer right away, especially because he did not seem to be worried about the translation; he was only worried about the way I should deposit it in my account and send him the difference,” Isabel Galvez, with IG Global Solutions, recalls. “I continued acting as if I believed him. It was almost funny, because I gave him a hard time. The first thing I did was try to call IndyMac and then I found out that it was now operating under a new name.”
Red flags
- Check the client's address and phone number. Try to talk to someone on the phone and request more information about the assignment.
- * While researching terminology on line or trying to become familiar with the subject, if you find the exact same contents you've received from a client —or worse, the translation you were supposed to be working on—, contact the client and ask whether they are responsible for publishing the material on the Internet.
- * Advance payment is not necessarily a red flag and translators should be happy to have already been paid for their work when they first sit down to work on a file, so they can focus on the job without worrying about collecting a payment. However, make sure the funds are completely cleared before you start working on the project, if that was your original arrangement with the client, and never agree to return any paid amount due to overpayment. Always ask for a new check with the correct amount.
Look out!
Hanks Martins / Hanks Blake (hanksmartins@gmail.com) and Rick Taylor (global-finance-solutions@gmx.com) were the false identities used by the scam artist on the Romania project. Their so-called associates were Isaac Hunter, Sandra Evans and Robert Donald. Jack Brown and Dr. Dean Murray were names reportedly used by scammers seeking translations related to an effort to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS. For more info on names of scammers and message styles, visit the Scam e-mails page provided by the TranslationDirectory.com.
* Rafa Lombardino, director of Word Awareness, Inc., is an English into Portuguese translator certified by the ATA who has been working in the industry since 1997, specializing in Computers & Technology and Social Communications. She is one of the founding members of the Association of Translators and Interpreters in the San Diego Area (ATISDA) and is currently teaching a 10-week class called “Tools & Technology in Translation” that is part of the T&I Program offered by the University of California, San Diego Extension.