Greater than 1 minutes
Creative criminals, these scammers! A translator who does not exist, sends a payment request for a job never done.
Hi
I’m Mihai Tonescu from Oregon, USA.
In October 25, 2015 I translated for your agency a document (birth certificate) from French to English. The price for this work was $ 25.
Unfortunately I got ill (tuberculosis – TB – caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which affected my lungs) and I stayed hospitalized 6 months in Waverly Hills Sanatorium – 1600 Clifton Rd, MailStop E-90, Atlanta, GA 30333, U.S.A.
Now I came home and I checked my PayPal account, but the amount of $ 25 is not entered my PAYPAL account.
Please send me the amount of $ 25 by PayPal into account:
as soon as possible.
I hope you are understanding and kind.
If you will not send me the amount of $25 as soon as possible:
– I will inform the websites:
http://www.proz.com/
http://www.translatorscafe.com
http://www.translationdirectory.com/
http://www.traduguide.com/
http://www.translatorstown.com/
that you are an incorrect translation agency which steals the work of honest translators;
– I have a list of 1 million email addresses of your country and a professional bulk email sender. During 5 days I will send messages to these 1 million email addresses and 1 million people in your country will learn that you are an incorrect translation agency which steals the work of honest translators;
– also I will inform all the newspapers in your country that you are an incorrect translation agency which steals the work of honest translators;
– also I will inform the police in your city about this situation;
– I will post a message on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/) that you are an incorrect translation agency which steals the work of honest translators;
You reputation and your honor are more important than $ 25.
Please send me as soon as possible $ 25 through PayPal.
Kind regards
Mihai Tonescu
I hope the real Mihai Tonescu, if he exists, has found a way to deal with these scammers abusing his name.
I wonder though how many people pay these guys… They would give up sending ridiculous messages if nobody would ever pay them.
But they did do their homework: they know how to threaten people 😉
Carl Tengstrom 
LOL, that email escalated pretty quickly! These guys definitely knows how to make threats! Love the closing lines: “You reputation and your honor are more important than $ 25.” I think I’m going to use it with some late paying clients, haha!
Wow, just wow. I’m glad at least it ended with “Kind regards”. 🙂
They probably decided to soften the blow a little bit, but I thought it would end with a a direct quote from Liam Neeson’s classic: link to youtube.com 🙂
Hmmm…. Looking at the “quality” of his English already makes me grit my teeth!!!
Incredible… how can some people even think of doing this? “Creative” jobs born with the Net… We’re all such ordinary people.. 😉
I wonder if other segments of freelance economy have similar types of scams or are we the only lucky ones?
Amazing. lol