Looking for Advice: How to deal with a fradulent customer

Greetings,

I am a full time freelance writer and have been for about 3 years now. I occasionally put together power point presentations (ppt) for clients. Back in June, a client that I have completed projects for in the past called me frantically because she needed a ppt within a day for a presentation. I was pretty busy but I always try to help out returning customers and so i agreed to take the job. She sent me the information. It was nothing major, just some statistics that i needed to interpret for her and make it look pretty. 10 slides in all. I was a little suprised when I saw the material b/c it wasn't for her work but for school - it looked to be for a class b/c part of what she sent me had email correspondence from a couple of other persons talking about their professor.

She said she'd call me back with the payment info and i said no problem. She called back later, begged me to send the complete project and promised she would pay me the next day. she was out of town for business and wanted to pay by paypal and didn't know her account information. yah i know... lame... but i'm trusting and have never had a problem getting payment from her. i sent her the project and went back to work on other things.

long story short, once i sent her the project she disappeared from the face of the earth. i talked to her once about a week after the project, she promised to take care of payment later that night and didn't. now, she won't return my calls or emails. it's been almost 2 months. clearly, she decided to rip me off.

after thinking about this on an off for a few weeks, I contacted the people that were in the emails she had sent me for the project. They confirmed that they were students working on a group project with my client, that she had been responsible for putting together the ppt for their group presentation. i sent them the ppt that I completed for her and it seems she passed off my work as her own for my class.

so yah, she ripped me off but she was dumb enough to include student contact information that enabled me to learn the class, the professor and the school. she was dishonest enough to not only decide to not pay me but also to turn in exactly what i did for her to her classmates.

so what should i do? contacting her professor will require minimal effort and i'm probably going to do exactly that. i'm a little worried that turning her in might also get her group members in trouble, but i would certainly stress that they appear to have had no knowledge that the work she gave them wasn't her own. I suppose that part of me also hopes that maybe she didn't intend to rip me off and cheat but that something happened to make her act so... ie, this was a one time thing rather than a part of a cycle. of course, i dislike being taken advantage of and the thought of contacting her prof. to commence an ethical inquiry is certainly tempting. it makes me wonder if the other projects that i completed for her were similarly used to fulfill coursework.

anyway, this is too long already. opinions would be appreciated. this situation might act as a cautionary tale for other writers as well. if you are working directly with a client, always get payment first.

i suggest you warn her first through email and her groupmates. give her ample time--about a week at the very least.

I agree with essayer - ask her groupmates if they could provide you with her alternative contact information. Then again email her at all email addresses you may have and leave the final voice message. If that doesn't help, wait a week and then contact the professor.

thank you for your comments. as fate would have it, the client contacted me late last night. after 6 weeks of silence i was surprised to say the least. my guess is the groupmates contacted her.

still no payment but she promised to do so today or tomorrow, so we'll see.

Maybe she's a member of this forum ;). Anyway, Good luck.

That's a good way for ********* and "Russian Threesome" (*********,EssayFraud and Essayscam) to 'punish' those customers who complain. I wonder if they all do like a "professor" writer, Lavinia, did---blackmail the customer!

So, write your own paper!! If you cheat with ********* (1)you will lose your money (2)your professor will be the first to find out!

I still wonder what you do here and I won't be surprised you'll be banned soon (you participate as a member in discussions and at the same time accuse this site of being a member of "threesome"). The moderators must be really patient..

Major, if you look at the other thread, jackazz is now accusing Lavinia of working for *********! Hilarious!


Hey, jackazz, are you now going to claim that Barclay (a barrister who successfully sued the Pakistani crooks at EssayRelief) of UKEssays is also a "fraudulent blackmailer" because of the following page?

ukessays.com/194162.php

You, sir, are the king of idiots. No wonder why your essay mills can't compete, even WITH the use of blatant fraud.

jack, i would try to respond to your accusations, but your posts are so ridiculous there is really no point. Neutral readers will understand you for the flake that you are.

I am a writer, I am not a ghostwriter. There is a clear difference. I don't produce work so that others can claim it for their own. If i wanted to do that, I would go ghostwrite celebrity autobiographies because that would be more lucrative.

The client's refusal to pay led me to suspect that she was using my work to cheat, that is all. I am not blackmailing her. Since finding out that she was using my work to cheat, I have considered turning her in, not as revenge, but because I don't write to help others cheat. If this was a project that just involved her, I think the decision would be easy for me. As it stands, my decision to act could also impact her group mates, which bothers me.

To be quite honest, as I've been thinking about this lately, I'm probably not going to accept payment and just write this off as a learning experience. The whole situation is simply uncomfortable and weird. Part of me thinks that even if she did pay, i'd always have a risk of her reversing the payment at some random point in the future.

I hope other writers at least learn from my clear mistake and always secure payment before delivering work.

thats a good point thanks

You bet its true! I've posted several evidences about the "Threesome Fraud" but they just hid the link that directs viewers to my thread and even erased the posts I did.

I'm just trying to follow this thread so forgive me if I'm a little slow in catching on .. why do you call '*********, EssayFraud and Essayscam' the Russian Threesome?

Jennifer, do you want to play this game? Think hard.

Um .. it's like an episode of 'Saw...' er, yes?

Only I know for a fact at least one of the three aren't Russian (at least, if you're referring to the forum Essay Fraud!)

To be fair, WB, if posts on here get removed as regularly as people are suggesting, given that I've only joined you recently, it is kind of hard to follow what people are discussing but I'm sure you'll be kind enough to spell it out for me :)

IMO you owe it to yourself to turn her in and you owe it to the other members she had to work with. Clearly she thought she could cheat you..so that's one strike, then she thought she could cheat her classmates..that's two strikes..then she thinks she can cheat a whole list of other people. If you don't put your foot down then she'll be doing this and getting away with it the rest of her life. She deserves what she gets and its only because of luck your able to correct this wrong against you.

"fraudulent customer" is redundant

cant do anything

Agreed.

So, like a reader caught up in a good book, I am wondering how this scenario played out for the OP. It's like a soap opera that does not end. It seems the conversation was cancelled mid-stream. Does anybody here know if Lavinia ever got the payment out of her shrewd client or not? Did Lavinia actually turn down the payment eventually? She seems like a nice person in the sense that she could have very easily destroyed the future of this student by reporting her to the professor, while clearing the group-mates of any blame. Unfortunately, it seems that she got caught up in real life and forgot to keep us posted about the eventual outcome of the events that unfolded. It is a story without an ending.

Yes, I know this thread is so old it could pass for an archeological dig site. However, I really enjoy reading posts such as these because they are true learning experiences that one can take numerous lessons from. So when the thread abruptly stops, I'm like a viewer whose show was cancelled mid-season, looking for the actual conclusion to the story I was following.

Since her groupmates would have been able to easily prove that they did their own work (assuming they did), then I would not have worried about reporting a student for dishonesty to the professor. Sometimes, blowing the student's cover is the only recourse a writer is left with. Specially when it is proven that the student conned the professor. You should have done it as soon as possible, possibly on the presentation date itself. Not that the professor would have taken your complaint or report seriously but, it would have at least planted the seed of suspicion in the professor, which may have helped you get even somehow with the student.

Ruin someone's life b/c you can't organize payment up front. Sounds about right as an official policy for your "company."

Sometimes, it is best to just charge these things to experience. Where a student commits a fraudulent act, the writer tends to counter with blackmail. In which case, both sides can do damage to one another. A writer can report the student to the school. A move which can result in expulsion or a rescinding of the student's diploma. The student, can bad mouth the writer all over the web and ruin his chances of gaining clients. A double edged sword if ever there was one.

This thread perfectly illustrates why nobody who's been doing this kind of work for more than 5 minutes would ever write any project -- let alone actually deliver it -- before receiving payment in full.

"This thread perfectly illustrates why nobody who's been doing this kind of work for more than 5 minutes would ever write any project -- let alone actually deliver it -- before receiving payment in full."
Yeah, I get your point and it's valid - - - - However, I believe it depends on the student's personality. I've had one who'd pay even before bringing the assignment, and sometimes he'd send payment months after the semester ended. Never had a single issue - - - - communication was always smooth and respectful. This should be both ways.

Please. Payment "months after" delivering projects is already a major "issue" that nobody who does this for a living is interested in dealing with, irrespective of the "personality" of the customer. Customers expect delivery on or before deadline, too, and not sometime after deadline because procrastination, irresponsibility, and inconsideration are all parts of the writer's "personality." Same concept.