Thomas J. West Music

Music PLN member Lindsay Morelli posted the following email from the Music Teachers National Association about a recent email scam:

MTNA has become aware of a scam directed toward music teachers. As many of you are likely aware, there has been a marked increase in the efforts of individuals performing acts of fraud via the Internet. Until recently these acts were not specifically targeted to independent music teachers, however, over the past few weeks many music teachers have received e-mails inquiring about having international students study with them. The person sending the e-mail poses as a parent interested in having their child or children study with them. The music teacher is offered prepayment for a certain amount of lessons, and once a cashier’s check is sent and in the bank the teacher is asked to refund a large portion of the check because of some emergency or to pay for the fees the ”parent” incurred in transferring the money and obtaining the check or for their children’s travel. The cashier’s check is an elaborate counterfeit and it takes the bank longer than usual to discover the fake.

If you teach private lessons, you can avoid being scammed like this by simply having clear and defined policies about lesson payment and refunds and reinforcing them. At no time should a potential client be dictating to you how much money they are sending you or how much they will pre-pay. Transferring money internationally outside of a service like PayPal can be very trick and a tad expensive. You need to have specific policies about international students if you offer lessons as such.

My international students are required to pay any transfer fees for electronic bank transfers. Period. If they do not agree to this, they can not take lessons with me.

Protect yourself by having a policy and sticking to it.

This article (c) 2011 Thomas J. West. All content on ThomasJWestMusic dot com is licensed under a Creative Contributions Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Please contact the author before publishing on or off-line.

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