Aupair World- Scam Warning

 

 

Thank you for arriving at our security page. The purpose of this page is to alert you to all the online scams that we come across.

The page is divided into four parts;

1. Scams against au pair families
2. Scams against au pairs and nannies
3. The steps that Au pair world agency takes to safeguard our site from scammers
4. Examples of attempted scams  

 

Unfortunately organized internet crime is a reality of the world we live in today. Scammer specifically target au pair agencies with a view to conning people out of money. We have a sophisticated security system that enables us to identify and weed out all suspicious profiles that we come across. However, as with any business, it is possible for a few to slip through the nets.

Nevertheless, provided you follow a few simple precautions, it will be easy for you to also avoid them.

We will now give you a quick rundown of how they operate so that you will aware if you ever become targeted by one of them.

 

 

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Scams against Au Pair Families

Scammers usually pose as either the potential au pair or nanny. They will then enter into correspondence with you and attempt to enter into your confidence. They often appear very genuine and sincere i.e. they often tell you how much they love children and how they are really looking forward to caring for your children.

However, once they have established your confidence they will then proceed to the actual scam. I. e. seek to extract money from you. The techniques that they employ are to tell you some sort of sob story of why they urgently need money from you, prior to their arrival at your home. Some of the stories, but not exclusive, are;

• They need an urgent loan from you to pay a travel agent, acquaintance or family member in order for them to  obtain a visa, airfare, vaccinations, medical or other needs.
• They often announce to host families that they have just had an emergency and have an urgent need for advance payment to deal with the issue. Some, but not all, of the emergencies given;

   

  • Urgent medical emergency i.e.  Mum or dad just died,
  • sister, brother or relative is ill in  hospital and need urgent treatment  etc. 
  • They lost their wallet and money and simply don't have money to get to you.

 

They will usually come up with an elaborate plan on how this money will be repaid to you once they arrive in your home.

 

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New scam trends

A new trend that we recently noticed and which we are monitoring very carefully is when the scammers, posing as Au pairs, do not initially ask for advance payment but instead simply  asks you to pay for their  plane ticket for the journey.

At first glance this does not seem like a scam as the Au pair is unable to cash the plane ticket and thus not gain anything from it.  

However, the actual scam takes place once the family has committed themselves financially to paying for the scammers to arrive.  The scammers then turns around and tells the family that the Au pair cannot get to the host family unless actual money is sent to cover transport cost, pay final rent etc.  The host families tend to be compelled to send this money because they have already committed themselves financially to the venture and do not want to lose their initial investment. However once  the money is sent they never hear from the scammers again!

 

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Simply rule to avoid scams.

 

Do not send money, gifts or any sort of financial package to people whom you do not know and have only met on the internet. We also strongly recommend that you do not agree to pay for the Au pairs plane ticket in advance. If  an Au pair or nanny is unable to afford the transport costs to come to you, then do not employ them.

It is a fundamental condition of this site that corresponding parties do not ask for any sort of financial package from the other party. Accordingly, if an  Au Pair or nanny asks you for any sort of financial incentive, place ticket money etc, it means that they are a scammer.  Please alert us immediately and the offending parties account will be immediately suspended. It will then be deleted on conclusion of our internal investigation. 

 

Signs that you are corresponding with a scammer.

• Urgent requests for you to send them money
• Asking for you to send them money or for you to receive money via Western Union, Money Gram, cashier's check, money order, shipping, escrow service, or some form of a "guarantee"
• It is  hard or near impossible for you to speak directly to the potential Au pair on the phone. They are almost never available. (caution: the fact that you are able to speak to a scammer Au pair does not mean that the person is not a scammer)
• The scammers usually comes up with a unique problem, something that requires you to have sympathy and understanding of their unique circumstances. It usually involves you having to trust them and ultimately send them money. Do not fall victim to their sob stories; these stories are repeated a thousand time a day on the internet.  

 

What to do if you think you corresponding with scammers

Alert us straight away and we will immediately suspend and eventually delete the offending persons account.

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Scams Against Au Pairs And Nannies

Scammers usually pose as either the potential host family or au pair family. They then enter into correspondence with you and seek to gain your confidence and trust; they do this by telling you how great you are for the job and how much they are going to pay you to work for them. They will often offer you huge sums of money, way in excess of the standard going rate! 
However, once your confidence has been gained and your interest is peaked they will then proceed to the actual scam. I.e. seek to extract money from you. The technique employed is to usually tell you that you now need to pay for an  “entry visa” or some other sort of cost. They will often refer you to a friend, associate, travel agent, lawyer etc and tell you to get in contact with this person so that they may arrangement for a visa, plane ticket etc.
DO NOT FALL FOR THIS SCAM. The scam is repeated thousands of times a day on the internet.
The travel agents and lawyers that you are referred to are always bogus. Once money is paid you will never hear from any of them again.  It’s unfortunate that every year at least 4-5 Au pairs fail to heed to this warning and are taken in by the scammers. They often lose considerable sums of money.

in summary;

NO HOST FAMILY WILL EVER REQUIRE YOU TO PAY AN ADVANCE PAYMENT EITHER TO THEMSELVES OR THEIR ASSOCIATE. I.E TRAVEL AGENT OR LAWYER ETC.

Please notify us immediately if any host family tries to induce you to pay money, either to them or a third party, i.e. travel agent, lawyer, and friend, associate. Once you notify us we will suspend that host family’s account.

It is a fundamental condition of membership of this site that no host family will induce a member to pay money either to themselves or to their associate. 

 

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The Steps that Au pair world agency takes to ensure your security?

First and foremost, we have a dedicated security team who monitor our site around the clock. We also pay attention to other site to find out what new methods are being employed by scammers. 

We do our best to check new profiles to ensure that the profile has complied with our strict guidelines. Our monitoring process helps us to detect any aberrations or abnormalities in profiles or behaviour. Once this is noticed we immediately suspend the account pending verification of authenticity.  

We also check the following;

• We check the completeness and plausibility of the profiles.
• We conduct continuous random checks on the profile to ensure that our members are continuing to comply with our guidelines.
• Whenever we come across an unusual activity by a user we immediately contact them and request an explanation. If a response if not forthcoming or we are unsatisfied with the response we suspend the account without warning.
• Whenever we come across a profile that we have concern with we request proof of identity.
• We inform our users about new scam methods.
• Once we have been notified by a member that another member is breaching our rules we will suspend the offending parties membership pending full investigation of the matter. For example, if  our investigation reveals that a member has been trying to induce another member to send them money then upon conclusion of our investigation we will permanently delete the offending parties  account.

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EXAMPLES OF SCAM LETTER RECEIVED BY OUR MEMBERS
(This list is regularly updated )  

 

Scam letter one

FROM:MR ABDUL HAMZA BILL AND EXCHANGE MANAGER, AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK (A D B) OUAGADOUGOU BURKINA-FASO. TELE/ +226 76 61 26 98.   Dear Friend,                                                                           (PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL)   I am ABDUL HAMZA the MANAGER in charge of BILL AND EXCHANGE section of AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK (A D B) Ouagadougou Burkina-Faso in West Africa.With due respect and regard I have decided to contact you on a business transaction that will be very beneficial to both of us at the end of the transaction. During our investigation and auditing in this bank, my department came across a very huge sum of money belonging to a deceased person who died on November  2004 in a plane crash and the fund has been dormant in his account with this Bank without any claim of the fund in our custody either from his family or relation before my discovery to this development.   Although personally, I keep this information secret within myself to enable the whole plans and idea be Profitable and successful during the time of execution. The said amount was sum of $ TWENTY TWO MILLION THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS ($22.3m)   Meanwhile all the whole arrangement to put claim over this fund as the Bonafide next of kin to the deceased, get the required approval and transfer this money to a foreign account has been put in place and directives and needed information will be relayed to you as soon as you indicate your interest and willingness to assist me and also benefit your self to this great business opportunity. ¦    I will not fail to inform you that this transaction is 100% risk free. On smooth conclusion of this transaction, you will be entitled to 30% of the total sum as gratification, while 10% will be set aside to take care of expenses that may arise during the time of transfer and also telephone bills, while 60% will be for me. Please, you have been adviced to keep "top secret" as I am still in service and intend to retire from service after I conclude this deal with you.   I I look forward to receive your email.   Yours faithfully, Mr ABDUL HAMZA HOME ADDRESS:288 QUEZIN FERDINAND AVENUE OUAGADOUGOU BURKINA-FASO.

 

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Scam two

Dear Friend, Greetings to you and your family my good friend, I am the manager of bill and exchange in THE BANK , i have a business of 2.5 Million United State Dollars to be transfer to your account for investment in your country , if you are ready to assist me get back to me, i will give you full details on how the fund will be transfer to you. Be rest assure that everything will be handled confidentially because, this is a great opportunity we cannot afford to miss, as it will make our family profit alot. It has been 6 years go, that most of the greedy African Politicians used our bank to Launder money overseas through the help of their Political advisers. Most of the funds which they transferred out of the shores of Africa was gold and oil money that was supposed to have been used to develop the continent. The Political advisers always inflated the amounts before transfer to foreign accounts so I also used the opportunity to divert part of the funds hence I am aware that there is no official trace of how much was transferred as all the accounts used for such transfers were being closed after transfer. I acted as the Account Officer to most of the politicians and when I discovered that they were using me to succeed in their greedy act,I also cleaned some of their banking records from the Bank files and no one cared to ask me because the money was too much for them to control As I am sending this message to you, I was able to divert the sum of two million five hundred united state dollars ($2.5M) to an escrow account belonging to no one in the bank. Now the bank is very anxious to know who is the real beneficiary of the funds because they have made a lot of profits with the funds. It has been more than six years now and most of the politicians are no longer using our bank to transfer funds overseas,as majority of them are not in power again, because their tenure has expired. The $2.5 Million Dollars has been lying in the bank as unclaimed fund. I will soon retire from the bank and without wasting time i will like the fund to be release into your account. So that i will come to your country for the sharing of the fund, The money will be shared 50% for me and 40% for you while the other 10% will be for the orphanage home with the poor people. There is no one that is going to ask you any question about the funds because everything is well secured by me . If you are interested in this transaction, do not fail to reply me back, but if you are not interested delete my message from your box ok. Hoping to hear from you soon. Yours Faithfully, Mrs Nadel Halioua. back to the top of the page