The worse the economy gets, the more active the scammers are. Today someone emailed me to ask my opinion on a mystery shopper job they’d been offered. They had received this letter along with a check for $3,900:
As you can (barely) see, the letter directs the new employee to cash the check and then wire $3,300 to one of the names listed. They are then to go shopping at one of the stores listed in order to evaluate their service. Then, they get to keep the remaining $350 as their pay.
The problem is that the check is no good but by the time it’s discovered it will be too late. The employee will now owe the bank the entire amount. That could break a family in these economic times.
It could be worse. Just ask Jack Brooks. He fell for one of these mystery shopping scams and was arrested for forgery and possession of a counterfeit check.
These are not isolated cases either. I did a quick search for the company name from that letter and found numerous people who had received similar letters and checks.
Aside from the fact that companies don’t just send out thousands of dollars to random people, there are some problems with the letter that should raise the red flags. The first thing is that the company address is supposed to be in Dallas, Texas but the phone number is from Quebec, Canada. I called the number and spoke with “Tony Paruso”. He answered the phone with, “This is Tony” rather than the company name, which I thought was weird. I asked for information about the mystery shopping job and he wanted to know if I had received one of their letters. I told him that a friend had referred me. He asked how he could help me and I asked him to tell me about the job. He then said that they would be closing soon and that I should call back tomorrow morning. This was weird too, since it was after 10pm in Quebec when I called.
Aside from all that, any time you are asked to wire money to someone you can be sure it’s a scam. It’s also important to realize that when money is wire transferred it can be picked up anywhere in the world, as long as the receiver has the correct transaction ID and password. Once money is sent, there is virtually no hope of recovering it, or tracking down the suspects.
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Tags: job searching, Scams
Hi Sharon,
I was just reading about the Mystery Shopping thing on your
blog and the thing that person should have done was to send
all the material back to the bank the check was written on.
I had a similar thing happen to me one time and that is exactly what I did. I sent everything back to the bank plus the check
which was in the neighborhood of $3,000.00. Well I guess you
know I was shocked and very disturbed.
Will never do that again.
Enjoy reading your blogs.
Andrea
natjack2@mail.com
Hi Andrea,
I’m glad you didn’t cash that check. Some of the people who have received letters from this scammer had called the bank prior to cashing it and found that it was not a real check. Another one made a copy of the check and when they did, the word “void” became visible on it.
In any case, the bottom line is that you don’t cash that check!
I received one of these checks, called the phone number provided on the accompanying letter, knew it was a scam, and tossed it.
Good for you…it’s so sad to see so many people taken in by this one. It’s so much worse than your “usual” scam because they lure you into doing something that’s illegal.