Be aware of "Chris Payne"

Satto (Roberto) wrote:

I recently was approached by a person going by the name "Chris Payne" to perform a translation project which could cost a couple hundred dollars. To be honest I did not suspect anything at first and did the short translation, which seemed taken from Wikipedia (1st red flag) . I did have some questions regarding footnotes that this person did not care to answer (2nd red flag). Then I provided by banking information for him to send me a check.
After a couple of days he said his accountant had mistakenly sent me a check for the wrong amount (US$ 2650) (3rd red flag). Then he was very keen to remind me every day to please refund him the excessive funds I had in my bank account (4th red flag). Obviously at this point I was very much aware of the scam attempt. I called my bank and they advised me to wait and see if the check would bounce. As I predicted the check bounced and Mr. Payne is no longer emailing me as his window of opportunity has long gone.

So be aware of "out of the blue" translation requests. Fortunately I only lost a couple hours of work.