Au Pair Scam

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 17 Jul 2007 Posts: 2

Hi all. I am new to this site and have a new kind of scam in my hands, or at least one I haven't seen posted.

I was looking for a live-in au pair (nanny) to come work with us for a year in Europe. I got in talks with a "too good to be true" nanny from New Zealand working in the UK. After some talks she said her current family had moved to Cameroon so that's where she would be coming from if the deal went through (red flag number 1 so I started being extra careful). Long story short, I wrote to 4 references from her previous aupair jobs in Greece, France and the UK and all replied with nothing but extremely good things to say. When I traced the IP addresses of all those e-mails, they all come from Cameroon. The Nanny website I used then comfirmed she is a scammer.

Now, I have not told her anything... and she hasn't asked for any money yet... only hinted that the ticket price was "beyond her budget" but that she would keep looking. I have no doubt that she will ask for some help with the ticket at some point.

Unfortunately, she does have my real name, address and phone number. What do y'all think about scambaiting in this situation? My wife wants me to walk away but I want 1 dollar from her in my paypal account!

In advance, thanks for your help.

Baiting Guru Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Posts: 11856 Location: UK

Hi Smalon, welcome to the eater, firstly, please don't bait this scammer, they have all of your personal info, it's just not worth it, drop them and don't reply to them again, they will soon get bored and look for another victim.

The au pair/nanny scams are very common, if you use the forum search function, you will see numerous versions in the results, or take a look at the Google results for "au pair scam":

http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=au+pair+scams&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

As for getting a dollar from them, "cash baiting" of any kind is frowned upon here and not condoned by eater, at the end of the day, any money you might get, will be money from another victim, either money the scammer has stolen through 419 fraud, or possibly through a phished PayPal account owned by a victim, PayPal would then be on your back asking you questions about any money you received.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 17 Jul 2007 Posts: 2

Fair enough. FWIW, later this week I'll post the whole story and how I spotted the scam.