I have been suckered by a company calling itself Creative Image Associates Inc. I received a linkedin message in late October 2015 from one of my contacts. I looked over the message and it looked on the up and up. I emailed the contact that was provided to me. We emailed back and forth from 25 October until last Friday the 19th of November. I received a cashiers check on 18 November. Like a greedy person, I deposited what I thought was a ligitimate cashiers check into my account. The check was from Siera Credit Union. I saw that on there. I also had to question the address that was on the priority mail envelope I received. The envelope had a true Chicago zip code on it. However, upon googling he address, I began to question if this was bogus. I have been a long time resident of Chicago and have never heard of a 3300 Lake Drive in Chicago. and the zip code was 60617. I believe that 60617 is a zip code assigned to the Chicago Loop. Unfortunately I had already deposited the check. It did clear by Friday morning. I then received instructions to go to an Apple Store to purchase 3 iPhone 6S, which I did. The next set of instructions were a bit sketchy, however like a chump, I went along with it. The guy, Victor M. Thomas PhD (so called) requested me to ship these items to Maryland. He wanted express overnight shipping. I did that thinking I would be finished with this stuff. Well, then on Tuesday November 24, 2015, I logged into my account and noticed a huge over 2600 negative balance there. I began texting this scam artist right away on Wednesday morning, 25 November. I saved all of the texts and I even called him on his scam. He said the check cleared. Well, I have experience with cashiers checks. In order to send a cashiers check, the money has to be there because it is already taken out of the sender's account. I contacted my financial institution and had to admit that I was screwed and scammed. I got a reply after a while that day. I left him a super long text message describing what happened. Victor M. Thomas, PhD (so-called) said it was an error. Yeah right. Oh, one other thing to mention, I had to email another person that sent me the funds for this bogus adventure. I actually saved the priority envelope and the slip inside the envelope with the bogus check. I am sure these scumbags laugh their little slimy you know what's off and keep pumping out this bs scam to others. What ever you do, be careful of this stuff. I have experience now and know what this is like. The last time I was suckered, I was dating a drug addict and she took me for about $5000. I thought that was bad until this embarrassing incident occured. I wonder what this person's PhD is in, scamming people. What did he do his dissertation in, the craft of pulling jobs on people?

Bob,
What you encountered is a very common scam and is sometimes done by people pretending to be legitimate Mystery Shopping Companies (MSCs).

The tip off is that legitimate mystery shops typically pay $10 to $15 and NEVER pay in advance.

MSC's don't pay by Express Mail!

There is another issue in that the banks do not warn you on a regular basis that when funds are released those funds are not cleared, but rather are released as a courtesy. It takes more than 5 to 7 days to actually know if a check is good unless the check is drawn against the same institution that deposits it. Banks cannot instantaneously tell you a check is good when it is supposedly drawn against a different institution. Also, banks are not legally penalized for not verbally reminding you that the funds you took could be " not cleared". The scammers knew that most people would think the check cleared when funds were made available. One way to stop this is to complain to the agency that licenses your bank and ask them how to force banks to remind customers that funds made available are not necessarily cleared.

Also, since you bought the iPhone, you can track it via law enforcement since the iPhone has a unique identifier on it. If you report it stolen for failure to pay you then you have a chance to punish the individual who has that iPhone and perhaps recover it then resell it as a used item on ebay to recoved some of your money.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/29/2015 03:26PM by gatekeepertwo.