I wrote this for the newspaper this week . . . Thats why it's in quotes.
"You’ll never believe me when I say it. It’s something that you hear about quite often, but think it’ll never happen to you. I don’t really feel victimized, I don’t know why I would, but if I had done a few things differently, I’d be in some big trouble. Let me tell you the long story, short:
I’m a decent saxophone player, so I decided I wanted to make some money off my talent. I posted an advertisement online for saxophone lessons. I also put some flyer out at the local school and music stores. One day, I got an e-mail from a mother wanting saxophone lessons for her son. I responded back, and got no further reply. About a week later, I get an e-mail from a James Hamrock. He wants his son to study with me, but his son currently lives in Alaska, and he is in London on a business trip. His business associate in Kentucky owes him $3200 for some farming equipment, and will send that money to me, where I am supposed to take out my pay for the saxophone lessons, and forward the money to the travel associate who will get the son to Utah, where the son will stay with James’ cousin, who will drive the son to and from sax lessons. If that made any sense to you, congratulations.
At first, it seemed reasonable, I was a bit confused about the $3200, but assumed that I would only be getting a check for my pay, and it would all work out. This did seem a bit fishy though. To make a long story short, I received a check in the mail for $3200, and didn’t know what to do. James tried to push me to get the money sent on faster, but my dad told me to wait until the bank told me that the cashier’s check had cleared. Three days later, the check came back counterfeit, and we discovered that we had been scammed.
Everything is fine with me, and if James Hamrock e-mails me back and thinks that I don’t know, we’ll let him know that we know, and that the Feds are after him too. We’ll also wish him a sarcastic good luck.
Yes, I have been a victim of fraud. Of scam. But that’s okay, because I don’t hurt. Plus, it makes an excellent story."
Sunday, February 10, 2008
A Good (Long-short) story
Extracted from the mind of Knot DemiGod at 8:28 PM
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10 responses:
Ha ha - James Hamrock just tried to buy my horse in exactly the same way!
haha dude this guys wants me to give art lessons to his son.
James Hamrock also wants me to give clarinet lessons to his daughter!
and me, for "lessons" of some unspecified type for his daughter.
Wow, it's 2011, my spouse is a saxophone professor at a major music school, and he just got a weird email from this creep. Thank goodness for the internet!
For me it was bassoon lessons in Arizona for his daughter, Mary.
Yup, just got an email from him asking for violin lessons for his daughter Mary, who is "eager to learn"
I got an email from him wanting voice lessons for Mary. I'm so glad you posted this!!!!!! I deal with the international community quite a bit and thought maybe the broken English was because he found me through that community...
*shakes head
How do I contact the Feds? How can I report this????
I just received a similar email to give Math lessons to Mary, his 13-year-old daughter, at my school or at my home (I live in CA). Somehow, I wondered how he got my email so I decided to Google "James Hamrock"! Thanks for posting your story!
Wow, I am so glad I looked his name up. James Hamrock also contacted me about lessons for his daughter Mary and I thought it was fishy. To bad... I'll have to warn the other teachers at the University to make sure they don't get scammed.
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