"Becca Marsh" looking for wedding photography service

She's using the email address: [email protected]

This was her first email:

Hello,

Kindly let me know if you're available on October 17th or let me know your available dates in October we can make a choice and get back to you. I just had an ear surgery and I have been advised to stay off the phone till i'm fully recovered . That is why I am contacting you via email and i want everything in place for my wedding before my recovery.

Thanks,
Becca

And...

After prying a bit and asking her for more details in order to determine whether she was a real potential client, she eventually showed her true colours with this email:

Hi,

Great job and your rates meet up with my initial budget for your 7hours package , so i will be giving you my credit card now for you to run the full payment for the job. I would need favor from you due to my present state of health i will be grateful if you can assist me in other to get the job done before i leave the hospital.

The favor is that I haven't pay the event planner that will handle the event and he doesn't accept credit card and I want you to add $1900 to the total cost for the photography and also add 100$ for tips for the inconvenience and after u run my card through u will deposit the $1900 to my event planner via his bank information so that he will handle the event venue once the money is been accredited into your account. So get me the grand total cost now so u can run my card now.

Hope to hear from you soon for the total cost and i can have you run my credit card through for the payment we can meet in person before the wedding dates when the venue is reserved to work out exactly what we want for our wedding and how the photos should look like.

Thanks and God bless,

Becca

...

Clearly she's looking to scam me out of this $1900 in some way... My guess is that she'd have me then pay the $1900 to a bank account that is hers, and not a supposed event planner's bank account.

So heads up to all wedding photographers. I find that this exact type of scam email comes in every couple of months.

Cheers!

Good catch!

Yes - it is a money laundering scam and the credit card she would have given you is stolen. You would have sent the money to either the scammer's account or a money mule's account and they would have forwarded it on to the scammer via Western Union or Money Gram or something like that.

I'm glad you caught this one and thank you for sharing the information!