Need money and a job? Then you could be just who con artists are looking for. BBB has received many complaints and submissions to BBB's Scam Tracker from consumers who have received an email, usually from a known company or source, stating they would like to hire them to do mystery or secret shopping.
They request information from you and state they will be sending a check to help cover your expenses. However, there is a catch. Before you do your first "assignment," the company asks you to send back a small portion of the check previously sent.
The scam - the check is fake as is the job offer. Once you send the fake company money, you'll be responsible for paying the money back to your bank. Remember that a bank is not responsible if you deposit a fake check.
If any offer sounds too good to be true it usually is. A legitimate company will not send you a check and ask that you send a portion back. Be especially cautious if an unknown company states they saw your resume online. Company spoofing (using real company names to scam people) is the preferred contact for the scammers.
Legitimate companies don't charge people to work for them - they pay people to work for them. It's certainly worth taking a few minutes to conduct an internet research for reviews and comments about mystery shopping companies that are accepting applications online.
Scammers need a good story to get to your wallet. Once they find one that works, they use it again and again. One of their old favorites brings together fake checks and secret shopping, and we've been hearing a lot about it lately.
Here's how it starts. You get a check in the mail with a job offer as a secret shopper. You deposit the check and see the funds in your account a few days later, and the bank even tells you the check has cleared.
Now you're off to the store you've been asked to shop at and report back on, often a Walmart. Your first assignment is to test the in-store money transfer service, like Western Union or MoneyGram, by sending some of the money you deposited. Or you might be told to use the money to buy reloadable cards or gift cards, such as iTunes cards. You're instructed to send pictures of the cards or to give the numbers on the cards.
Fast forward days or weeks to the unhappy ending. The bank finds out the check you deposited is a fake, which means you're on the hook for all that money. How does that even happen? Well, banks must make funds from deposited checks available within days, but uncovering a fake check can take weeks. By the time you try to get the money back from the money transfer service, the scammers are long gone, and they've taken all the money off the gift cards, too. (By the way, money orders and cashier's checks can be faked, too.)
The moral of the story? If anyone ever asks you to deposit a check and then wire or send money in any way, you can bet it's a scam. No matter what they tell you.
Note: the websites reported here are operated by the same Nigerian fraudster.
