Another, similar scam making the rounds comes from a guy named Jacob Hooks. Same scheme... they send you a check for more than the booking and want you to cash it and send them the difference. It took several emails with this guy before the scheme revealed itself. Grammar was pretty good and the first several emails sounded pretty authentic, but the red flags started to appear around the third email when he revealed the payment procedure. Once you see those red flags, the best thing to do is to just stop communicating with the scammer.

My radar improves by the day, but even so I clicked an AppleSupport tag at the bottom of their official page. It brought up a shiny hi-tech office picture. A click on 'chat now' brought on a guy eager to take control of my mac and 'fix several issues.' Only when pressed did he say there would be an upfront charge. Then, click! Gone. Apple confirmed it was no part of their organisation.

Yez, I has been in this country a long distance now....

And the would-be hits just keep on coming. Bad grammar helps identify them, but also beware of looks-like-but-not-quite URLs. I get periodic phishing attempts from "docusgn.com" which look ridiculously authentic, and which I didn't notice at first since one of my major clients uses the real Docusign service fairly frequently.

Another thought - I wonder if the irony is not lost on us that "Rob" simply wants to rob us. "He" may be "hearing impaired," but we are not blind!

I hope everyone has a happy, joyous and successful holiday season, and here's to a great year-end wrap-up and major league 2018!

You'll want to forward that to rescam.org.

100% scam. Myself and other coworkers all received this email. Anyone that says they're hearing impaired and then asks for your cell phone number is looking to gather your personal information.