What do you do with the phony requests from
Recently, we have been getting e-mail requests from “deaf” people, asking for a trainer for a group of their female relatives who will be arriving to me by taxi. The person requesting is never from the USA, and we know this is a scam. They are trying to give payment with phony means, then ask for a refund. When they get the refund, the original form of payment is declined, and the trainer is out the $. We would like to try and stop this charade. When we write back that these requests are being forwarded to the FBI, the chain of communication stops. Anyone else have a solution? I know that trainers are falling into this trap and losing big dollars.
Thank you for posting about this issue. We have heard from other fitness professionals with a similar problem. While there is nothing we can do about it after the fact, as we are not able to track this person down, we suggest not responding to an initial request that seems out of the ordinary in the future. Please let us know if you receive any requests via IDEA FitnessConnect, so that we can try to track them down.
Kelli Davis
IDEA Health & Fitness Association