I was surprised that 50 people were willing to write a $2,700 check.

Full article here:
[www.kbtx.com]


Bryan Company Warns About Mystery Shopping Check Scam

BRYAN - Mystery shopping is a popular way to make a little extra money but scammers are using a local Bryan company's name to conduct an illegal business of their own.

News 3 takes a closer look at how mystery shopping is supposed to work and what you can do to avoid being conned.

The checks and logos look real but Mike Green, President of Customer Impact, says his business is not writing these checks.

"You can see that they used my logo," Green said.

Customer Impact pays people to give reviews and surveys of businesses and then analyzes that data to help make the businesses better.

"Nobody that I know of sends out email solicitations. Typically it's mystery shoppers trying to come to us. We get 800 applications a month so we don't really need to go out and look for people," Green said.

The scam started a few years ago. Victims are sent fake checks and asked to wire or send back part of the difference after shopping.

The Better Business Bureau of the Brazos Valley got involved in August when people in Bryan/College Station were first targeted

A couple months later, the scam took a strange twist. Customer Impact started getting checks intended for the scammers because the scammers, for some reason, gave the victims the real company's address

"We received 50 packets in one day from UPS and we opened each one of them and they had a check for $2,700, so that's over $100,000 in checks that we called the postmaster and handed to them that got their attention," Green said.

While mystery shopping is a legitimate business you should never have to pay money to be a part of it.

Bill McGuire with the Better Business Bureau says they never caught the scammers. They are not believed to be local as some of the cases have been traced to Africa.

"The key red flag Clay is always if you get a check that's for something you didn't enter or whatever it is. They're strangers who sent it to you you weren't expecting it and they want you to run it through your bank account and then send them some money, either wire or a check back, whatever it's a scam," McGuire said.

"It is crazy how widespread it is. We'll get a call from Seattle one day, New York one day it's all over the country. We're really not sure how they're getting the names to start with," said Green.

Customer Impact has alerted the FBI and Federal Trade Commission.

Customer Impact also suggests researching companies you get suspicious mail from and with emails be aware if they are from accounts like Gmail, or Yahoo, instead of a corporate email account.

I like the twist - where lots of victims are saved because of the stupidity of the scammers, who gave the company's real address, allowing the company to grab the checks and turn them over to the postmaster. Amazing that so many people are willing to write a check for $2,700!

Exactly. If the scammers gave Customer Impact's real address, what were they going to get out of this whole thing?

It had to have been a newbie scammer who excelled at the "Scams: Creating a Convincing Sales Pitch" class, but was so overconfident that s/he blew off, "The Most Important Details of a Successful Scam" class.

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I haven't owned a checkbook in years. People still actually write checks?

@Sybil2 wrote:

I haven't owned a checkbook in years. People still actually write checks?

If you have kids in school, you have a checkbook. You need to write checks for activities and school related items. Otherwise, you'd be getting multiple money orders.

What's a checkbook?

This is one of those threads I can't get out of my head. I mean, it's one thing to lose out on $10.00 because you missed an important detail on a shop; imagine what it feel like to lose out on $135,000 because you missed an important detail, ("ALWAYS have them WIRE the money back!" on a scam!

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@SoCalMama wrote:

@Sybil2 wrote:

I haven't owned a checkbook in years. People still actually write checks?

If you have kids in school, you have a checkbook. You need to write checks for activities and school related items. Otherwise, you'd be getting multiple money orders.

I pay rent by check since they pass on the credit card processing fee to the tenants. I ain't paying that if checks are free. I pay daycare by check because they do not pass on the processing fee, they are small center that charges a low fee for quality care, and I want to help them out on that.

I agree. In my older-than-your-life, checks are still a necessary payment option. For example, to my amazement, the specialist I visit will only accept checks; we contribute to my MIL's rent at the assisted living center by sending her a monthly check; the tree service guy only accepts checks (or cash), etc.

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