The IDTA would like to advise you about these current dance related scams that are doing the rounds of inboxes everywhere.
Scam 1: Pre-booking a large number of lessons for an event (wedding, birthday party, etc).
You’ll receive an opening email similar to this:
Hello, This is NAME. i would like to know if you’re available to do dance lessons. I’m organizing my daughter’s wedding and i want you to teach the Bridesmaids choreography. Let me know if you can do this. I await to read from you.
Best Regards, NAME
If you respond, the scammer will ask how much they need to pay you and send a cheque that looks completely innocent. The scammer will wait a few days for you to deposit the cheque and then email you again and cancel, asking for you to send a refund. As you no longer have the cheque to tear up you will have to send the refund out of your own money. After you have sent the refund you will no doubt discover the original cheque to be fraudulent and will be out of pocket for the amount refunded.
You can read more about this scam here: https://www.facebook.com/notes/michael-dean/scam-alert-to-dance-studiosteachers/10209152599353356/
Scam 2: Payment by credit card only
A similar scam to the one above. You will receive an email similar to this:
Hello, My name is NAME. I got your information online for dance classes. I’m organizing a surprise dance (like flashmob) for my daughter’s wedding, So I want you to teach the Bridesmaids choreography. Let me know if you can do this.
If you reply to this scammer then they will discuss details with you and offer to pre-pay for the lessons via credit card. If you don’t offer credit card services then they insist that you setup an online payment facility for accepting credit cards so that they can pay you. Presumably this is a similar scam whereby the credit card is fraudulent and you are asked to refund or make a payment to somebody else before the amount has cleared into your account properly.
You can read more about this scan here: https://twistinvixens.com/2016/10/13/dance-choreographer-scam/
New information to note:
With the scam on the credit card the card owner has 90 days to report the card stolen which allows the fraudster 90 days to disappear. When you put the card payment through you get an authorisation number which everyone assumes means the payment has gone through. This is incorrect, the authorisation number only means that at the time of putting the payment through the card has not been reported as stolen. IT DOES NOT CONFIRM PAYMENT.
Anyone who is concerned should not do a refund until at least 90 days after transaction. The money is automatically withdrawn out of ones account by the bank and that process cannot be stopped. If they do a refund to the card they could potentially loose out twice!
Many thanks to Dave Peebles of the BDC for this update.