Am I Being Scammed?

I need to know if I am being scammed here. I answered an email to become a Secret Shopper. I was sent a photocopied letter with instructions and a Cashier's Check for $1989 from PNC bank in Indiana. Instructions say to deposit the check, keep out $327 for my payment, buy a $30 item in a store, review the store, and forward the balance to another shopper in Istanbul Turkey, then to review the Western Union transaction. I researched Cashier Check scams and this is apparently a classic. Email lists a popular website link, but his email adresses seem strange. I sent him an email stating I did not want to deposit this check, because if it is fake, I will be responsible to pay it back. I have not contacted the bank yet, as I was waiting for his reply. He urged me to continue the process due to time sensitivity. Is this real? I have not officially signed up on the shopper website. It does not seem legitimate to me. Please help me out if you can.

Thank you.

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Nothing in life is free. For someone, whom you have never heard of, to send you money, it is totally a scam. It behooves me why some people want free money. If you THINK it is a scam, then likely it is. No mystery shopping company would send you payment before the assignment. NONE.

If you get a check for a large amount of money AND it includes you keep some AND send some to a foreign country AND evaluate the RETAIL that cashes the check,--------------<You are being scammed!!!!!!!

You are aware of all the earmarks. Why would you think of it being different? Your chances are better off, if you purchase a lottery ticket

Yes, everything about it is a scam. I often wonder, though, why mystery shoppers sometimes say that no MSC would send you money before the assignment. I want to clarify that this has nothing to do with the scam above so please do not think I am telling you that it is not a scam. I have had a company send me a gift card which could only be used at a certain restaurant for me to use on my mystery shop. The purpose was to see how they were handling the gift card. No, I am not going to name the company or the restaurant. In addition, I had a series of merchandising assignments a few years ago and while the money didn't come up front, the company immediately sent the check to me by overnight courier service! Sadly, the company is in another line of business now. Outside mystery shopping, in my other job which, again, I will not name or I would have mentioned it in posts sometime in the past, I sometimes, not always, get a check up front from a company. It has always been a pleasant surprise. That field is very scarce and obscure, so I obviously don't need to discuss it. Having said all this, I encourage mystery shoppers to be skeptical of anything that comes their way but do realize that occasionally someone does do legitimate business differently from others in the same field.

Good for you for checking it out first. Now cease all communication with him, do not delete the emails from him. If you know how to display the headers and other gibberish on an email print it out and take it and the check to the police.

There's probably nothing they will be able to do but it will be added to statistics and maybe passed along to some task force somewhere who should be trying to track these people down.

Time to build a bigger bridge.

@mps wrote:

I need to know if I am being scammed here. I answered an email to become a Secret Shopper. I was sent a photocopied letter with instructions and a Cashier's Check for $1989 from PNC bank in Indiana. Instructions say to deposit the check, keep out $327 for my payment, buy a $30 item in a store, review the store, and forward the balance to another shopper in Istanbul Turkey, then to review the Western Union transaction. I researched Cashier Check scams and this is apparently a classic. Email lists a popular website link, but his email adresses seem strange. I sent him an email stating I did not want to deposit this check, because if it is fake, I will be responsible to pay it back. I have not contacted the bank yet, as I was waiting for his reply. He urged me to continue the process due to time sensitivity. Is this real? I have not officially signed up on the shopper website. It does not seem legitimate to me. Please help me out if you can.

Thank you.

yes man, this is a scam. As a rule, unless the person contacting you can cite a person you know specifically (and you can verify with them) there's not going to be a time that a job offer for a mystery shop sent to you unless you signed up with them first. They are trying to catch people who are new or perhaps have not been exposed to this kind of thing and are banking on you not having the knowledge to catch it until it's too late.

You did yourself well by coming to ask for more information. You're gonna be all set as long as you have a support network of some kind for stuff like this. Good on you man. Too many people fall for this stuff.

CEO The Mystery Shoppers Depot
US Wide route shopper with 12k+ shops completed over 48 states and 6 countries.
Airbnb host based in Chicago and 10% discount if you mention this forum

I have to add, please don't take it to your local police. There is nothing they can do with a check that came from overseas and only wastes their time because they have to take a report and list it as an inactive case pending leads - which never come. Podunk Holler Sheriff's Office certainly isn't going to send someone to Turkey or Nigeria or wherever looking for the scammer. If you were actually defrauded, you can file a complaint with IC3 online but even then it's doubtful it will be acted upon. FBI is interested if you lost $3000 or more.

The best thing you can do is to warn everyone you know and keep warning them.

There are two types of people in this world: Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.

@LJ wrote:

I have to add, please don't take it to your local police. There is nothing they can do with a check that came from overseas and only wastes their time because they have to take a report and list it as an inactive case pending leads - which never come. Podunk Holler Sheriff's Office certainly isn't going to send someone to Turkey or Nigeria or wherever looking for the scammer. If you were actually defrauded, you can file a complaint with IC3 online but even then it's doubtful it will be acted upon. FBI is interested if you lost $3000 or more.

The best thing you can do is to warn everyone you know and keep warning them.

Can confirm.

CEO The Mystery Shoppers Depot
US Wide route shopper with 12k+ shops completed over 48 states and 6 countries.
Airbnb host based in Chicago and 10% discount if you mention this forum

I am also new to this and I had the same thing happen to me I was sent a large check for 2400 from a company they told me to keep 400 take 20 out of the 2000 and go to the place the wanted to review. Next they wanted me to do a money transfer back to someone else, but it was being transfered somewhere in taxes is this a scam as well?

@cherish wrote:

I am also new to this and I had the same thing happen to me I was sent a large check for 2400 from a company they told me to keep 400 take 20 out of the 2000 and go to the place the wanted to review. Next they wanted me to do a money transfer back to someone else, but it was being transfered somewhere in taxes is this a scam as well?

Absolutely a scam. Why would a stranger pick you out of everyone else and mail you a check for $2,400? Had you applied with them and furnished a SS#? Mystery shopping income is taxable and it doesn't pay big fees like $400. Since the check is no good, they are not worried about anything..........it's just more money in their pocket if you fall for it.

Thank you to everyone who responded to my post. You are a good community; I'm glad to be involved with you. Now I know what to watch out for...

THANK YOU!!!

mps

@AustinMom wrote:

@cherish wrote:

I am also new to this and I had the same thing happen to me I was sent a large check for 2400 from a company they told me to keep 400 take 20 out of the 2000 and go to the place the wanted to review. Next they wanted me to do a money transfer back to someone else, but it was being transfered somewhere in taxes is this a scam as well?

Absolutely a scam. Why would a stranger pick you out of everyone else and mail you a check for $2,400? Had you applied with them and furnished a SS#? Mystery shopping income is taxable and it doesn't pay big fees like $400. Since the check is no good, they are not worried about anything..........it's just more money in their pocket if you fall for it.

There are fees over $400, but as a general rule you're right. The big fees are also not going to be go and cash a check and we'll pay you 400 lol.

Ive never really understood how these scams make it past peoples critical thinking detector to at least raise a red flag.

CEO The Mystery Shoppers Depot
US Wide route shopper with 12k+ shops completed over 48 states and 6 countries.
Airbnb host based in Chicago and 10% discount if you mention this forum

Oh the irony.

There are reasons that a body stays in motion
At the moment only demons come to mind

I can imagine the excitement of receiving a large check and then being told you can keep a few hundred of it. However, common sense would have to tell you that a company would not send you (a person they don't know and have no association with) would send you a large check.

I've found that a lot of these scammers use the names of legitimate mystery shopping companies. In that case, go to the company's website and contact them directly and ask them if they sent the check. I guarantee you that they didn't.

Ask yourself this Cherish (OP): Would you mail a check to someone for $2,400, who is 1,000's of miles away, that you don't know and ask them to cash it and send on the difference to someone else?

Ask yourself that and you have your answer.

PS: Do NOT respond back to scammer. He is mailing 1000's of people daily this letter, in hopes that ONE will respond and send him some money. It is a highly known, world wide SCAM.

I was just notified last week there is actually a company who has you cash one of their checks at a check cashing place. They do not however ask you to western union it

CEO The Mystery Shoppers Depot
US Wide route shopper with 12k+ shops completed over 48 states and 6 countries.
Airbnb host based in Chicago and 10% discount if you mention this forum

I had a similar incident with a potential "client" wanting me to photograph her "wedding". She waited until the week before to send me a certified check with instructions to send the extra money to her wedding planner. When I received the check, the Post Office didn't want to deal with it. The local police told me it wouldn't be a crime until I deposited the check, and then I'm the criminal. I ended up calling the bank the check was drawn on. I ended up sending them the check, the USPS Tracking Number, and all the emails with headers.

A couple of days after the "alleged" wedding date, I got an email from the client complaining I ruined her wedding and she was contacting the FBI to charge me with wire fraud. I sent her a reply in 36-point font: "Bring 'em on!" Never heard from her again.

The point is the only entity that will care is the bank that the check is drawn on, so that's your best bet to contact, as well as the best use of your time.

.
Have PV-500 & willing to travel.
"Answers are easy. It's asking the right questions which is hard." (The Fourth Doctor, The Face of Evil, 1977)

"Somedays you're the pigeon, somedays you're the statue.” J. Andrew Taylor

"I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him." Galileo Galilei

@James Bond 007.5 wrote:

The point is the only entity that will care is the bank that the check is drawn on, so that's your best bet to contact, as well as the best use of your time.

What will the bank do with the information?

There are two types of people in this world: Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.

In my case, I did get a thank you note from the head of the bank's LP department. The information I gave them allowed them to track down the person. The person ended up avoiding prosecution by agreeing to testify against the person they had bought the account information from. So yeah, I did my own small part to help.

I too received the big check. I had answered an ad for mystery shopping that did not say anything about a lot of money but even before I received the money in the form of a money order, I already had figured it to be a scam because of the poorly written emails telling me of the package that was coming. When I received it I did let one of the companies that I do mystery shops for about it. This company has a warning on their website about scams and they had me send them copies of everything that I received and they were going to pass it on to their legal department. They also recommended me going to the local police but I see in this forum it really isn't going to get anywhere. I did not try to cash their money order and I have not answered any of the emails that I have received since. They have so many different email addressess and I just ignore them.

One thing to watch is how things are written. If you get emails about mystery shopping and they use poor grammar and are badly written then you probably are being set up for a scam. The actual mystery shops that I have done are very particular about how we write report so I'm sure they make sure their correspondence with shoppers is correct.

@Vecchia: That's great news! Good for you!!

(heart)

I intend to live forever. So far, so good.

OP: Please be aware that they will continue to send you letters and emails if they think they can break you.... Set the emails as Junk or change your email address if they continue to bother you. Whatever you do, don't respond back to them. They have 100's of 1000's of other emails to send out to catch another fish...

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