A bit of back story, I am a personal trainer so I do get random emails from time to time from people that are interested in working with me. I have posted my email in a few places online.
So, guy from Canada emails me out of nowhere saying he and his wife will be visiting the UK for 6 weeks and are looking to book a months worth of sessions while they are on holidays.
The pre agreed price is 1620£ which he agrees. He asks what kind of method would I like to receive payment. He claims that he should mail the money now as they will be visiting Mexico before coming to the UK, so it will make sense to plan all the payments while they are in Canada as they won't carry Canadian dollars while on holiday. He tells me because he is away his "associate" will mail the cheque to me.
A day later the cheque arrives, but strangely enough it is for double the agreed upon money, so 3840 EUR. (why is it in EUR if UK has GBP and Canada has dollars?)
I email him back telling him that he made a mistake and he sent way too much money, and h responds with this (paraphrasing) : my associate made a mistake, he was supposed to send you your money and the rest to me. The best way to handle this is to return the cheque to my associate so he could fix this but he is currently away for a conference for 2 weeks. (convenient?) We should do this ASAP since he is in Mexico and he needs the rest of the money to buy the tickets to the UK "before they get too expensive". (OK first of all, who plans their holiday out like this, without buying all the tickets beforehand)
So he suggested I cash the cheque, keep my pre-agreed fee and then visit a western union to transfer him the money to a family member of mine in Mexico to avoid any costs if I was to make a business transfer. Which also would be the fastest way to forward him the money. And also make the money available to be picked from any Western union location in Mexico.
And here I am, thinking whether this is a scam or not. I still haven't gone to the bank to cash the cheque.
Please let me know your thoughts!
Edit : why didn't he ask me to simply wire him the money in his bank account, wouldn't that be the fastest way of sending him the money?
Submitted August 26, 2017 at 04:48AM by 10Dante4 http://ift.tt/2xAVT2D
