Mystery Solved!

I've figured out the tutor scam!

Well, I didn't exactly figure it out myself, but I found the explaination.

I was checking out my traffic logs, specifically the search engine stuff, and I saw that someone reached my site by Googling the phrase, "how are you doing today ,i can read your description and i am very impress and interested," so I checked out some of the other things they found from that search.

One of the search results is a warning about this very scam, and quotes the exact same wording that was in the first email that I got from "Mamma Italiano."

Here's an excerpt from the warning:

If you have a studio policy or other information online about your teaching, associated with your email address, please be aware that there are a lot of con artists online, internationally, who target music teachers with emails. You probably have received or will receive an email something like this very typical one.

. . . (sample that looked a lot like one I got) . . .

Please be apprised that this sort of thing is a scam. If you accept a check, you will find that the account has no funds or the check is stolen. The fraudster will request a refund, and hopes that you will send this before discovering the check is worthless. If you're naive enough to give them your bank information "to transfer funds," they will clean you out.

Read the whole warning, and several more examples of these emails.