I received a text from 813-666-54176 yesterday requesting a web design quote. He asked if I took credit cards and I said yes but only via PayPal. He followed up via email (
[email protected]) with a description of the type of site he wanted and example of how it should look and gave me a huge budget to work with. I spent two hours researching his request and preparing a quote, which was reasonable for the project yet much less than his proposed budget. At that point, I thought this was a normal query for a web design quote.
I told him before I took any deposit payment, I wanted to schedule a free phone consultation to go over the project, which is what I do for all clients out of my local area. He said he was unable to talk over the phone due to health issues (lung cancer). That's when I first got suspicious. Who would hire someone without first discussing the project to make sure the company was capable of doing a good job? And he never requested references or links to other sites I have built. That's usually the first thing people want to see before they even ask me for a bid.
Within a few minutes of receiving my email response, he sent another text offering me $600 more than the deposit amount I had listed in the bid but that he wanted me to enter his credit card number into a credit card machine (which I don't have since I only take cards via PayPal) add $2500 to the amount that was already over what I would have required for the deposit, and then pay his consultant from that extra money. I told him he could use his card to pay both me and the consultant via PayPal because I needed a valid record of the transaction. Then he asked me (via text) if I could register for an Intuit account using my phone number so I could accept his credit card through their payment processor. I told him to find someone else. Then I did a Google search for him and found out he is a scammer.
I still have all the emails and texts, but I won't be communicating with this person again.
Thank you.