how it works out for them, at least what they plan:
they book several consecutive fishing charter days with me,
let's say for 10KUS$.
i confirm that with pick up times and the details to process their payments.
they pay the amount by credit card, not with one, they use several, which of course would not be a concern for me as the outfitter, to me it just matters that my customers pay.
but before they proceed the payment they come up with the following:
Dear Sir,
we are ready to pay the full amount for your services with our credit cards. we booked our flights with a small travel agent and would like to transfer his/her fee for our airfare together with the payment to you. of course we know that due this some extra transfer fees will occur to you. we would like you to transfer $1.850.- US$ to our agent's account after you received our payment. please advice about the full sum we have to send to you including our complete fishing charter rate plus the agent's rate plus abny extra cost you have due this.
a e-mail like the mentioned above(written in my own words, it is not a exat copy) reaches you shortly before the 'customers' planned to arrive here for their fishing vacations.
so you have to act quick.
they send you the money,
the next day you forward the agent's fee to the provided account, the next day the payment to you get's taken back by the wireing bank b/c they found out it was done by stolen aso credit cards, the money you forwarded to the 'agent' of course they took out from that account at an ATM, no money back for you.
how to spot such false e-mails:
sure it is not a simple typo, everybody writes typos, i do such in quantities on daily bases, ha ha.
but first of all:
nobody has a typo in the signature of his e-mails, written his homecountry misspelled, that's very suspicious at least.
and suspicious is the way the e-mail is written. it is clearly not written by an educated englishmen.
and they offer right away full payments for multiple charter days for high rates by credit card, that's the most suspicious point in my own charter business situation.
in my kind of business only one kind of customer would offer such right away without asking a million questions about fishing/boats/crews/baits/seasons aso in the first place, and that kind of person would be a friend of a regular customer who highly recommended my outfit, so that request would right away include the name of the regular who recommended my business, and of course regulars themselves, but those i know by their e-mail address anyways and they usually drop a phone call first to ask how's fishing lately, how's it going buddy aso.
nobody offers to a stranger outfit to pay several K'sUS$ without asking details about the outfit/operation.
i have many UK customers in my business,
even that english is only my 3rd language i can read right away the differences between a british customer requesting a charter service and those fraudulent e-mails. of course there is reading experience involved, i run my business online since many years now and receive such scammers since the beginning.
i even had some who mention me in their e-mail with my name, so they prepared their e-mail specifically for me, but the writing style is always the same.
the one i copied in the prior post is very typical in case of fishing.
i know from many american sportfishing bords where i am a sponsor and chat regularily with other Captains and business owners that those mails are usual around the globe and since many years.
some sorrily even fell into the trap and lost some money on it.
in case of the fishing they very often suggerate to be british, i don't know if they are or not, but at least 90% of the scam mails i receive myself say they are british.
prevention:
i can only speak for myself and how i protect myself/business on such:
* i do not accept forwarding any money to a third party, who books with me pays to me and travel agents/flights aso are not my business
* full payments by credit cards i usually accept only by regular customers. new customers have to pay a small $100.- deposit first, that way i see that the transaction been legitimate and not done with a stolen credit card, if such deposit been fine for a week the customer can do the rest payment by credit card prior to arrival.
* basically i try to get as upfront payment only the $100.- deposit and try to convince the customer which wanna pay the rest by credit card to do so upon arrival at the Marina, on board of the boats, i have wireless card processing machines on board, that way i see the card physically (so nobody can use just a stolen card number) and i see the person physically, i can ask a ID to compare to the name on the credit card, aso.
of course there's no 100% security procedure to not get caught by some kind of scam/fraud aso,
but at least for myself my lil security procedures worked fine til today and i get never caught in such kind of trap.
the only fraud caught in been a few years back a false $100.- bill which i found out later on when i couldn't say sure which customer gave me the bill. it was a really bad copy on very bad paper, clear false, but that morning i had too many customers at the same time so it slipped throu my guards.
100 bucks in 14 years i name a good average, hope it stays that way.
Mike