Trust

With both of us out of a job and unemployment coming to an end, I've started looking into ways to bring in money. I'm an educated, capable individual and have lots of talent to offer, so when I came across a request for an English tutor on craigslist, I applied. The ad was not very specific so I responded asking several questions about grade level, work being done, etc. I was surprised to get a response within a few hours from a man whose son would be visiting my area from Denmark and needed tutoring 3 times a week. He offered to pay $50/hour for the month that he would be here and asked me to pick a location that the child's nanny would take him to. The child would be arriving in 2 weeks and he would pay me in advance. He then asked me, if this was all agreeable, to send him the total fee and he would mail me a check that included my fee and the nanny's fee. It also asked for all of my contact info as well as gender, birthday, and marital status. Given that he really knew nothing about me, I thought this was fair, though I didn't send him my birthday. The email was in the very broken English of a nonnative speaker. Since he hadn't answered my questions, and I was genuinely concerned that I don't have the skill to tutor and ESL student, I responded asking more questions.

The next email I got explained that he was now sending me a money order for $2850 and would I please cash it and forward the remainder, minus and money order fees to the nanny at a certain address. It included a tracking number for an overnight UPS envelope. Apparently I was late getting this email as the package was on my doorstep already with a business check inside. I had no idea why he was sending the whole amount to me instead of two seperate checks, but I chalked it up to a cultural choice. Later that morning, I got a call from the man wanting to confirm that I got the check and trying to offer any answers that I needed. He spoke in a very heavy accent and not great English, so I will confess to being relieved when the call got disconnected. I didn't answer when he tried to call back.

He had made it clear that time was of the essence as his son was now due to arrive in a week and the nanny had to receive payment first. After the kids naps, I drove over to the bank to find out how long it would take for the check to clear as I had no intention of sending money on until it had. IT was the bank who informed me that this was probably a scam, the check, which looked totally real, watermarks and all, was probably counterfeit and they wanted to turn it over to their security office. The security officer called me the next day to confirm that it was a scam.

My faith in humanity is pretty shredded. Should I avoid doing business with anyone who seems different or is different from me? Is the internet an unsafe place? And despite the fact that I did all the right things to verify this and that no harm was done, I'm embarrassed to have trusted in the first place.