Aupair scam

[pleem]

We registered on a website to find an aupair. We got a few application but the one we were most interested about was a young lady, british national, going by the name of Ethel Holmes who claimed to have tremendous experience, friendly, considered, playing the piano etc....and God fearing. She send us four references which we did contact (by email) and rapidly get four stellar recomendations. She claimed to be presently employed in a family in Cameroon working for an NGO. She tells us she is ready to join our family. She tells us the plane ticket is rather expensive but seeing we do not offer to pay for it claims that her step father wired her the money. The day before coming, she writes us an email saying she needs a medical exam. A few hours before tacking her flight, she sends us an email saying she needs some shots which will cost 130 euro and ask us to wire the money to the vaccination office and give us the email address: camvac@dr.com. Sure enough, we rapidly get an answer back from the Center for Vaccination and Control with the name of the person the money should be transfered to by Western Union. Luckily, I googled the name and found it on another aupair site. While we were discussing with Ethel, we tried to speak to her and asked her for a phone number we could reach her on but she always had a good excuse. At this stage, I am convinced this person does not exist but it is simply a scammer who impersonates "ideal" aupair in the hope to get someone to tranfer money for a plane ticket, vaccine or a bunch of other credible story. Looking on the internet, I later found a few people who had unfortunatly transfered money for a plane ticket and were latter ask for money for the shots and then ther was a bus accident and a hospital bill and the story went on and on. It is interesting to note that the @dr,com is indeed a mail.com account as posted on this web site and being used by a lot of scammers.
I hope this post helps someone to avoid the scam.