I was contacted by Adam Mason on Yahoo to provide yoga instruction to his sons while on vacation in the United States. He said that he found my name on Yoga Alliance website (probably true) and wished to pay me in advance. Sure. He had his assistant, Dennis Hunt, in Tennessee, fedex two postal money orders of $870 or ($1740) total. I planned on charging only $180 for 3 lessons. Strange.
I am never trusting of anything I receive unsolicited via email.
I took the postal money orders to a bank (not mine) and asked if I could cash them, and explained that I was not certain that I was not being scammed but was not sure. The teller suggested that I send the postal money orders back to the person who sent them to me, and not cash them. She had seen this scam before.
Adam Mason asked me to forward the balance of the money via Western Union to his agent - in the Phillipines. Right.
I wrote back to Adam Mason (whatever his name) that the bank would not cash the money orders, and that I lived in a very small town and did not have a Western Union office (true). I then took the money orders to the post office. They put the money orders through a machine and told me that they were counterfeit. I turned over the money orders, the fedex envelope, and the email correspondence to the post master.
Adam Mason never wrote me again.
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