Hi, I am new in the translation field as you can probably tell by the title.
What happened was that recently I was sent an email from an agency that said they were a big and true translation agency. Turns out their email address was very similar but there was a letter that was tripled. Mind you, I had been sending emails to all translation agencies I could find online, so when they replied I was not impressed (it was not the first time an agency had contacted me back). I reached out back to them and they replied. They told me the job was complex and the amount they would pay per word was going to be somewhat higher than usual, but nothing extraordinary (or at least I thought). It was $0.35 per word for an 8,000-word article. That rate is much more normal in Brazilian standards (looking back it probably isn't, in comparison, as it is actually USD and not BRL).
Anyways, I accepted it and actually managed to do it. When it was time to pay me (almost $3,000), they said I had to email a different guy from the paying office.
When I emailed him, he replied saying they were having issues paying people through PayPal, which I thought was weird, and went to check but didn't really find anything denying or confirming it. Some sites said it happened, some sites said it didn't.
After that, he proceeded to email me a virtual bank web address where I was supposed to create an account in order to get paid.
The name of the bank is Vaulton Online Bank. I searched it up before sending any important info in, and I got a whole ton of websites saying I was safe (they were actually talking about Vault Bank). Also, I have some fault in this as I really didn't pay attention to the name of the bank and I myself read it as Vault, despite having written Vaulton, because I copied and pasted it.
After creating the account, the guy asked me for my account info and I handed it to him. Today morning, the money was there, but when I tried to transfer it to an account that I can actually use the money, it asked, first for an IBAN, which is something that is NOT used in Brazil, and when I proceeded to transfer without putting in an IBAN number, it asked for an IMF CODE, which, if you know what the IMF is, you know that thing can NEVER exist in this context of banking.
To summarize: they got the translated document and probably are going to deliver it and get paid themselves, and I have put my personal info into a bank that I thought was another one and now am worried it will be used for messed up purposes (which it most likely will) and I do not know what to do about it.
TLDR: scammers contacted me as an actual agency, I did a translation job and when I delivered the job, they made me create an account in a fake bank and when I tried withdrawing the money, it would request things that don't exist.
Edit: Guess what? They are charging a "refundable" compliance deposit of $225 USD to release the IMF CODE (it doesn't exist).