This is the first email I received. It looked fairly legitimate, not unlike others I’ve gotten, so I answered as I would any other inquiry.

Note the “To” is not to my email address (I didn’t notice this until writing this… probably BCC’d a bunch of photographers to see who’d be foolish enough to respond)

His reply came fairly quickly. Address, details, etc. But it was a bit too straight to the point and a bit less what I normally deal with. Still, not an unreasonable email to get.

I responded with a quote for the work.

The language in his reply gave me a good wiff of the smell of a scam. Telling me how payment will be made, wanting things done ASAP, asking what name (he’s been talking to me hasn’t he?), etc.

A quick second email to respond to my question about the type of photos he’s looking for.

Probably shouldn’t have given him my real address, but I wanted to see where this would go. Also at this point there was a chance this wasn’t a scam.

I also wanted to know who the person I got the referral from. Knowing this would give me an idea of how real “Jeremy” was.

I have no idea who this person is unfortunately. There are a few Joanne Trepanier’s on Facebook, but no one recognizable to me, which I tell him.

Here. We. Go.

Finally the scam comes along, in all it’s amazing, over payment scam glory.

So full of scam it’s bursting!

Let us count the ways this is complete bullshit…

Language — “by next week unfailingly” — no one talks like this

talks like this Payment handled by someone else

The most amazing reason for merging payments… running low on paper checks

The son in law being away so nothing could be confirmed

The obvious over payment scam part where I’m expected to pay the “caterer” and get a little extra for myself

A reason that I can’t get a hold of him

Not that I didn’t think so before, but now I have zero doubt that this is a scam. Just to see how far I could push him, but also I kinda didn’t want to deal with this. So I told him to bugger off.

Note, this came in on June 10th

A day later

I day later I changed my mind. I figured that I had some spare time and I will be doing whatever I can do to mess with him and to waste his time.

Luckily he was very understanding.

I did figure it was only prudent to make sure I had everything straight.

Just in case he wanted to unravel this thread some more

He confirmed of course, and guess though “wait and see” was a good answer about the referral.

A week later I hadn’t heard anything and I was very sad and of course, anxious to see the next phase of the scam.

My email to him a week later

His reply came the next day telling me to wait.

I also figured I’d ask some other questions that a reasonable wedding photographer might ask, like some other contact info.

The number, of course, is as fake as his party

According to google the 913 area code is in Kansas. I had a friend call the number and it was disconnected (surprise surprise). Not sure how you explain an 80 year old in the hospital and having a birthday party in Chilliwack with a Kansas area code, but because I wanted to continue messing with him, I didn’t pursue this farther.

Nine days later he is checking in with me to say things are ready to go.

“Nemalux Industrial” is a real company in Calgary FYI. But I wanted to poke a bit more at it to see if he’d give me any more information.

Easy solution, just ignore the question.

This is now a string of “have you got it yet, have you got it yet?” emails with me replying no each time.

I’m always helpful

Note to all scammers out there: calling someone “Dear” tells them that you’re a scammer.

The last time I’d heard from “Jeremy” was the 4th, a week ago. I was starting to get worried! Well, worried that my scammer had disappeared that is…

Phew, would hate for that payment to be lost in the mail again!

A week later it was back to “have you got it, have you got it?”.

I was being honest here about how it’s frustrating for him

It Arrived

Amazingly enough a real check (well, at least a physical object) showed up.

Nothing weird about this now is there?

The check looked real enough to me. Again I have no doubt that if I deposited it successfully in the bank it would bounce very quickly (hence why he wants me to let me him know ASAP so he can get the money transferred from me to the “caterer”.

A few days later I actually called Nemalux and asked for someone in accounting. They told me that they had actually had this happen several times before with people calling them about fake checks. She had no idea why they were being targeted, but that it definitely wasn’t them.

Now the fun started with me delaying depositing it in my bank.

I’m not lying here

He’s very worried that someone else might reserve the date for his event of course.

Aw shucks

A “goodnight rest”?

He’s getting really anxious here. Email at 10pm and then again at 8:30am to see if I have the funds available.

I lied here of course, just stringing him along some more. I wanted to see if the “issues” with the check will raise any red flags.

But they didn’t luckily. He has full faith!

So a bit of truth and a bit of a lie here. I did go to the RBC Bank (the bank that issued the check), and I did talk to the manager, and I told her about the scam and showed her the check to see if she could tell me anything about it. She said it looked like a check from them but it was missing some security features, like a watermark on the back and a series of microdots or micro-writing around the outside of the check. Also the numbers along the bottom had some in the wrong order.

She didn’t think it was a real check but someone had simply printed their own (which looked and felt fairly reasonable, but was fake nonetheless). She got a photocopy of it for records and training.

She also said that if it were deposited in an RBC it probably wouldn’t have worked as they scan checks when they come in.

I told “Jeremy” that the funds were available so that we could get on to part three of the scam.

But of course not my dear Watson

Now he wants me to give him my hard earned money. I mean, pay the caterer.

A web search for emycooks@satairs.com doesn’t pull up any results, and the web page for that domain is a one.com landing page.

No useful info in the whois either, other than it was registered at Verisign.

There’s more information that can be gathered here I’m sure if I dig a bit more.

Anyway, back to him bugging me to transfer the funds and me delaying.

Asking for a screenshot for confirmation is something the other scammers tend to do as well.

As the real intention of this whole email is to put this all into the RCMP’s hands, here’s the full headers of the emails I’m getting from him (Gmail, so not a lot to go on here, but who knows).

But now back to your regularly scheduled “have you done it yet” emails and me making excuses for why it hasn’t been done yet.

This time I let him sweat for most of the day pretending that I was having Internet issues. In reality I was at a high school grad reunion swimming in a pool and catching up with some old friends.

So now he moves on to the next tactic…

Cash moola!

So because I’m having Internet issues, “Jeremy” wants me to take out cash and deposit it directly to “the caterer”. I honestly don’t know why it matters if it’s a TD bank though, as you’ll see in a moment BMO (Bank Of Montreal) comes in to things, and you’ll recall the check is issued from Royal Bank of Canada. I wonder if the idea is that using a bunch of different banks means that there’s less chance of taking a check from bank 1 to a branch of bank 1 and having them recognize the fake check (as RBC did). Seems reasonable.

I do feel bad that “the caterer” is sitting there expecting their funds though :( (no not really).

I thought about asking “Jeremy” to throw me a few dollars so I could turn my Internet back on, just for fun — obviously I would be able to complete the transfer as quickly as possible! Let’s just prime him with the idea…

I work a bit in network security for a living so I know that having someone else know the question / answer for security Internet transfers is a security risk, what did he think about me contacting the caterer directly (not that I couldn’t have just emailed the email address myself of course). But luckily he said it wasn’t a big deal.

What is it about scammers using CAPITAL LETTERS? That and “Dear”.

Anyway, I wanted to clarify exactly what he meant by CASH DEPOSIT, was that some sort of e-transfer or did he literally mean withdrawing a pile of cold hard cash and taking it somewhere? Maybe to their home address?

Sadly I can’t show up on the caterer’s door :(

Let’s see what information we can get about our caterer.

Surprisingly (maybe) I got a bunch of information back:

I took this into the closest BMO (Bank Of Montreal) at lunch today and talked to a manager there. They said they couldn’t tell me anything about the account (privacy rules and everything) but they could tell me that based on the branch number it is located in Alberta.

I ran a few searches for “Obi Amanda Chidinma” and found a couple of what appear to be real people with that name, but unsurprisingly they don’t seem to work anywhere near Chilliwack.

Next tactic. Tell him that the bank needs more information as I’ve never dealt with this person before. Maybe since the caterer is local I could deliver it by hand, or mail them a check?

Nope, he’s being helpful here.

Maybe he can send me a few dollars to help me out? Or maybe I can just drive over to deliver things in cash. Obviously this is the easiest way to do it.

Again, he didn’t seem to go for it. Wonder if he’ll want me to take a photo of the cash as well? Ah well, I’ll pretend to get the cash tonight. Let’s see if I can get him to send me some photos, maybe get some more information from him in the form of photos?