Is this a scam? From aupairquest.com

Hello! I just signed up to the website aupairquest.com. I have received a message from a host family in the United States specifically from a man named Mark Dollas and this is the message that I got:

Wednesday, 17 June 2015
Dear Quennie,

How are you doing today with your family&friends, my name is Mr. Mark Dollas, my wife is Rose, we have 3kids, we are an American citizen and we stay in Miami, Florida (FL), USA, we need your assistance in my house I and my wife are always busy with work, we only have weekend as a free day and we need aupair/nanny that can take good care of my children when we are not around, please kindly write me back quickly to know if you are still available to work for my family then I can tell you all the necessary thing about the work and salary okay.....
Here is my email contact: [email protected].
I wait to hear from you soonest..

Regards..
Mr. Mark Dollas.
[email protected].

--Is this a scam? What should I do? Should I reply through his email to get some more information and to find out if they will ask money from me? I hope someone could advise me. Thank you!

[AlanJones]

I can tell from the English used that it was not written by someone who is an educated American, but by a West African, so it is definitely a scam.

If you are looking to au pair in the USA, then forget the free websites, all you are likely to find there are scammers.

The US visa requirements for au pairs state that only a few approved au pair agencies can sponsor au pairs to work in the USA. You can find a list of the registered agencies on the US State Department's website - if you are referred to an agency that isn't on the list or to one using different contact details then it is a scam. Your best bet would be to contact one of the approved agencies and work with them to become an au pair.

--Is this a scam? What should I do? Should I reply through his email to get some more information and to find out if they will ask money from me? I hope someone could advise me. Thank you!

Hi and welcome dazzlingtiara18. As Alan said, just stop communicating with the scammer. Pretend as if you have fallen off the face of the earth. Block his emails / phone #, and or what ever means of communication you have had with him. Under no circumstance should you tell him you know he is a scammer, or that he is posted here.

See this article for more information about these types of scams :
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3232#p191371

Dear dazzlingtiara18,

Could you provide us more information about the possible scam, so we can take reasonable measures and delete this person from our platform if necessary. We also got a button on each profile were you can "Report inappropriate content" and / or you can contact our Support Team by emailing us on [email protected].

We want to take action as soon as possible, but therefore we need more information. You can send us the information by email or by reporting the inappropriate content, by clicking the "Report inappropriate content" button and follow the instructions.

In case you have any questions or problems now or in the future, please contact us directly. Thank you.

Best regards,

Support | AupairQuest.com
http://www.aupairquest.com
[email protected]

Your feedback helps us to improve our quality and service to you and our future customers. In case you have any questions, you can reach our support team by emailing us on [email protected].

Welcome aupairquest!

We are always glad to see interest from the sites that are being abused by scammers. We have a regular visitor from one of the US au pair agencies, and her contributions alone have probably prevented hundreds, if not thousands, of young women and men from being scammed.

I do want to make a couple of points, though:

the possible scam

we can take reasonable measures and delete this person from our platform if necessary.

To be perfectly blunt, the equivocal nature of these statements concerns me quite a bit. The message that is posted is textbook African au pair scam. There is no possible about it, it is absolutely 100% fake, and I would expect that this should be obvious to any experienced personnel on an au pair website. I would hope that firm and swift action would be taken.

Second, your post sounds to me just a little like an attempt to discourage the user from posting here. While I sincerely hope that your site is proactive and quickly eliminates reported scammers, we would still encourage users to post the scammers' information here, for a simple reason--scammers rarely limit their scam attempts to a single site. Odds are very good that if the scammer is attempting to lure victims on your site, he is also using the same fake name and email address to target potential victims on another website (whether it is au pair or something else) or via email. Because of this, the basic information on the scammer and the approach he has used is valuable and may very well prevent another individual from being scammed.

Welcome to Scamwarners!

Let me add that, though I do not deal much with au-pair scams, I've communicated with a lot of scammers, and I see five different traits of writing that show that the writer of that email is a native speaker of a Niger-Congo language, not an American citizen. It is quite certainly a scam.

Thank you all for the replies. We have take action on our platform regarding this person. Of course, it is a very good thing people post their concerns on this forum and are able to prevent other people being scammed. AupairQuest certainly does not want scammers on the platform and we are proactive in case of blocking scammers, therefore we have built-in different systems to even prevent scammers from registrering on our website.

In this case the communication was in a private conversation and we saw by coincidence the message on this forum regarding the problem. We are very glad we noticed it here, but it would have been handy if our Support team was also notified so we could have taken immediate action. Anyway, we're glad we could still take appropriate action.

Best regards,

Support | AupairQuest.com
http://www.aupairquest.com
[email protected]

Your feedback helps us to improve our quality and service to you and our future customers. In case you have any questions, you can reach our support team by emailing us on [email protected].