Hello all - I am about to receive my first check for my first job. Not going to lie, with all the scammers out there it makes me nervous; however, I am glad to have only found positive information for the company. Let the fun begin.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/2017 03:25PM by Mebbie.

Welcome to the forum. As long as you are not being paid BEFORE you work and the fees offered make you wonder whether it is worth your time, you are not dealing with a scammer. And for any given company you will find folks that love them and folks that hate them--just a difference in taste. Companies that nobody wants to work with won't stay in business long.

They are sending me a check to use to purchase - is that normal?

No, definitely not.

The standard scam is to have you respond to an email giving personal information such as name, address, phone number, date of birth and sometimes social security number by return email. That is NOT how legitimate companies work.

Legitimate companies rather leave it to you to find them and register on their secure website. You then request or self-assign jobs, usually from the job board on their secure website. You download the guidelines, perform the shop with any purchase requirements coming out of your own pocket to be reimbursed later. You report the shop, usually on their secure website and within a few days they either contact you for more information about your shop or they approve your shop. Then depending on the company it may take a week to three months to be paid your fee and reimbursed for your expenses up to an agreed amount.

Scammers tend to send you a check of more than $1000 for you to deposit and then take out money for your fee and a 'shop' purchase, then wire transfer or purchase cash cards with the money left over. They want you to email them the numbers from the cash card so they can drain the card without having to have the real card. Either way, you will have transmitted to them usually more than $1000 and then their check bounces. Yes, your bank will show it as available funds in a day or two, but several weeks later it will come back to bite you and you will have bank fees in addition to restoring enough funds to your bank account to cover any overdrafts created. Scammers use the names of legitimate companies as part of creating a 'reality' for their scam, but if you contact the real company they will tell you that you are being scammed. Many of the real companies have on their websites cautions about scams because they certainly can not control who might abuse their name and reputation.

Flash is absolutely correct!

Mebbie, you got lucky finding this forum before depositing or cashing this check, and doubly lucky that Flash happened to see your post and give you the truthful information before you made a serious mistake that could seriously hurt you financially. If you already did cash or deposit this check, please contact your bank immediately and do NOT spend a dime of this "money" because as was posted above, the check is fraudulent. Have you ever heard of anyone getting paid in advance before completing any work? Why would someone pay a person who has never done any work for them before and that they do not know at all, in advance?

Check out the links below for previous forum threads about the check scam:

[www.mysteryshopforum.com]

[www.mysteryshopforum.com]

[www.mysteryshopforum.com]

There are plenty more where that came from, and a few years ago there was a young man in college who got targeted and boy did it mess up his banking status. Take care.

Thank you all - I am supposed to receive the check tomorrow. Any idea what I should do with it?

If it were me I would call the legitimate company to give them a heads up that a scammer was using their name. Then I would probably drop the entire correspondence and check in the trash unless the legitimate company wanted me to mail the stuff along to them. If you tell us the company name we can likely get you a phone number for the legitimate company.

Another option is to turn it over to your local police.

Reality Check Mystery Shoppers - they contacted me via LinkedIn

Nathan Booth is supposed to be the recruiter

I've heard that you can present it to the postmaster general, as it is mail fraud, among many other things.

Reality Check schedules through Kern. They have a contact form on their website:

[www.realitycheckservice.com]

Thanks, @JASFLALMT. There is also a phone number on that site and I would just call since it is a toll free number.

Good idea. Probably a lot easier.

Thank you - attempted the name directory - no such person with those first 3 letters. I will try them again in the morning.

Ross Thomas is the President over there if I recall correctly. You may want to ask for him.

Thank you - I will