I wish I could post images to this note to all shoppers. Today, I received in the mail by Priority Mail a check made out to me for $1,950.52 for payment for an assignment. The only piece of paper in the envelope with title was as follows: CUSTOMER SERVICE EVALUATION TOOL (CSET). The idea of this was to keep $400.00 of the check, and save $50.00 pending further instructions. Next if I did this i was to go buy three American Express Gift Cards at a retailer for at total of $1,500.00. Next was to peel off the Silver Sticker on the back and then capture an image of each card. This was to be done in survey form, and then sent on to the company with the survey. The Priority Mail came from an address as; Crecasmed Logistics, Inc. in San Francisco, CA. The check was drawn on a bank in Arkansas under Arvest Bank. Arvest Bank is owned by the Walton Family and one of the largest in the U.S. I called the bank today to ask to have them verify the Routing Number. Of course this was not the correct routing number. The bank check number was the same as the false routing number. First time in 20 years that I received this. I called my personal bank today, and will take this package to them so they can report fraud (Hopefully). Have any other shoppers received this in the mail? Write and tell the Forum if you did or even cashed the check. I hope you did not do this.

This is a well known scam that has been around for a very long time. Unfortunately, some people continue to fall for it but any seasoned mystery shopper would immediately recognize it.

If you indeed received it by USPS, the proper group to contact is the US Postal Inspectors. They have the ability to shut down the address it was shipped from and to seize all assets.

One of my friends got a $2500 check with the same type of scam. She's pretty savvy but she was just POSITIVE the check was good because it had a watermark on it, and the routing number matched the bank it was drawn on. She got it via FedEx, as USPS was getting close to catching these losers at that time, so they switched to FedEx and UPS for a while. The check looked very much legit but we all know that no one just sends out big checks willy nilly like that. My friend never deposited the check, but to this day she swears she lost out on a great opportunity.

Scammers like this also do this when one applies for jobs. There was a scam going around that my son almost fell for. They reached out to us, told us he had gotten a job and he would be in an assistant position and all he had to do was buy some materials and he would be paid for it. They first wanted him to cash a check though which I thought was too fishy and had to investigate even further and as I messaged them questions it became pretty obvious it was a scam.

Thanks for your input.

Unfortunately this forum is littered with threads started by people who either fell for the scam or came on here to ask first, thankfully. At one time I asked if there could be a separate area of the forum dedicated to scams since there were so many being started but the idea never got off the ground.

I got the fake check and emailed pictures of the package and check to the USPS Inspector General.

This lady in line behind me was telling her friend about her windfall check and the gift cards. I told her it was a scam. She said I was wrong. I told her to verify the checking account. I don't know what happened after as I went to the register.

A few years back a friend of mine was asking me about mystery shopping. I told her where and how to get started and to call me before she took any job. I cautioned her about scams and what they usually look like. The next time I saw her she told me she had gotten one of these checks and taken it to the bank to cash it in but fortunately the teller would not allow her to as she recognized it as a scam.

I received one, Priority Mail, USPS. It had a USPS Money Order for $2500. I turned it over to our Postmaster. Even with a magnifying glass, and a printout from USPS how to ID a fake money order, she could not tell it was fake.

But I knew it was.