You’re recently unemployed, searching job boards and posting countless resumes. Suddenly you receive an e-mail that you can’t pass up: get paid to go shopping. You e-mail them back trying to withhold your enthusiasm. They tell you you’re a perfect fit and you can start right away. First, they’ll send you a check for a few hundred dollars. Second, cash the check, use a few hundred to go shopping at Walmart, take notes on your experience and keep anything you buy. Finally, make sure you test Western Union by wiring some money to an international address. So what’s wrong with that?
The Dirty Secret in Secret Shopping
The problem is that the check is fake. Sure, your bank will clear the check the next day, but in a week or so you’ll receive a call from them telling you the check was a fraud. Now the bank wants its money back—see they gave you the hundreds of dollars based on the fact that the check was real, now that it’s not, the bank comes up short. The only way the bank can get its money back is to take it from your account, even if the balance is zero. So unless you kept the receipt of all the things you purchased at Walmart and can return each one for cash, you’re suddenly going to have to come up with a lot of money to make the bank whole. And because you wired money internationally through Western Union, you can kiss that money goodbye. It is nearly impossible to ever recover funds wired through services like Western Union or Moneygram.
How to Be Sure There’s No Dark Secret
Make sure you only cash checks from reputable companies. It’s rare for a real company to ask you to cash a check before you do any work. Also, never, I mean never, wire money to someone you have not met in person. You should also do your due diligence and research the company that is supposedly hiring you, check Scambook.com to see if anyone has had a similar experience. If the company e-mail address is from Gmail, yahoo, Hotmail or other similar places, then it is probably a scam, like “[email protected]”. If they provide a link for a corporate website, make sure it is legit and not a phishing attempt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing Finally, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Real “Secret Shopping” companies exist, but they aren’t very lucrative. A typical secret shopper makes $10-20 an hour and does not get free shopping sprees. Meanwhile, the fake “Secret Shopping” companies offer $200 per outing and let you keep hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of merchandise.
Learn More
Many news organizations have looked at this scam in the past. ABC News says that people have “lost thousands of dollars after cashing counterfeit checks and wiring money back to scammers.” http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/wireStory?id=4407858 MSNBC tells its readers to “never accept a job that requires you to cash a check and wire money.” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21119508/ns/business-consumer_news/t/secret-shopping-scam-two-price-one/ Finally, the Federal Trade Commission has written a great article about the dangers of the “Secret Shopper” scheme and others like it. They warn that because it can take banks weeks to discover a fraudulent check, you are responsible for any funds that you use from that original check. They also say that if someone insists that you wire money, “end the transaction immediately.” http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre40.shtm
How to Help
If you get an e-mail from someone saying they are hiring secret shoppers, the best thing to do is to mark the e-mail as spam. Don’t respond to it. Delete the e-mail, throw the letter away, and don’t respond. Visit Scambook.com and post what the e-mail said to alert others who might be wondering if the amazing job opportunity they are being offered is real. Then get the word out, tell people to visit Scambook.com by sharing your post on Facebook and Twitter.
Don’t be a Victim
The people running this scam are trying to take advantage of the millions of hard working Americans who have been put out of work during this recession. While it may seem like a relief that you might get a steady paycheck once more, a little ground work can prevent massive headaches later.
Video: Secret Shopper Job Investigation
See Also
Beware: Infomercial Scams
Avoid Free Credit Score Scams
Government Grants Scams
THIS COMPANY I SIGNED UP FOR GAVE ME A SPECIAL AT LEAST TO THEM AT TEN DOLLARS OF THE SIGN UP FEE IN WASHINGTON STATE THEY SENT ALL TO ME OVER THE WEB TO MY EMAIL WOW SO MUCH TO READ AND FOLLOW BESIDES ALL THAT WHICH I UNDERSTAND OF RULES TO ANY JOB, THIS WAS WAY OUT MORE DID NOT KNOW ANY TIL SIGNED UP THEY MADE EXTRA STIPULATIONS THAT MERELY MADE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO GET STARED I DONT BELIEVE ANY OF THEM TO BE REAL JUST MONEY TAKERS AND NEVER TO RETURN EVEN IF YOU DONT UNDERSTAND AND WHEN IN THE TIME ALLOWED TO ASK FOR REFUND YOU ARE RERFUSED. $ 39.00 IS MUCH TO LOSE.
Boy, you described my mystery shopping experience to the “t”.
I have a $5000 skillet that I bought on such a desperate attempt to make some money for my family. The bank does get their money and there is nothing you can do. I recieved several checks after that for a while. I kept them as a reminder of my stupid trusting of other people. I actually thought I was going to do good.
Most the places you send the money to is in Canada. I know that is where $7500 of my my went to anyway. Hard to trust anybody on internet. They all lie just to get a one time fee. The gurus do the same thing. They scam too.
Hey,
I’m sorry you had to experience that….so did I. Anyway, What did you mean, when you said the bank get’s their money. Did you mean that the fact that most banks are FDIC insured. Please give kme some insight on that.
Thanks,
Lisa
Noël R. 23 minutes ago
I was victim of a scam in 2008 and I can tell you this affected my life and even to this day!
It did concern an heritance, which was bogus as I found out too late! I went to (2) banks to inquire about the documents received by e-mail, and the persons- supposed to know about this type of scams- never told me about it!
Of course, I lost $5,500 and more… Even today, I blame the banks for not advising me about the fake documents when I asked them to look at them and tell me… These transactions were done by WESTERN UNION, here in Toronto.
Forget about the huge fees they collect in the transactions processed to send money overseas from Canada. WESTERN UNION has no interest in changing the way they do business, which is made for the crooks to take advantage of!
Until last second, I was undecided to go through the process, but thinking about my mother who has been sick and in a wheelchair for many years, I was thinking of making her life better by making sure she would have a nurse 24/7 looking after her, and to move her to the countryside/mountain where she had previously lived. This is my reason I accepted to be involved, and not for gains, as many people may believe. There are good people in this world, but also very bad ones! Of course they don’t believe the life after this one, which is the Eternal Life! If they did, they would not be involved in it.
I only wish I came to a large amount of money to get those scammers who have affected my life since 2008, and make them pay for their crimes!
This is only a short comment about my situation in dealing with the scrums of the earth! Sending them to jail is not the sentence I would apply for the crimes committed on innocent people. I believe the guillotine is the solution for any one of them who take advantage of any individual; families, and seniors.
There is a solution for catching the scammers, but it is for the government of each country to act!
It is a very simple process to be set up in place. .. When someone asks for money to be send in England, as an example, the location the money should be received has to be requested so that with camera on site, the crooks could be arrested on the spot. Actually, this is not the process, and it is the reason the scammers get away with the money.
Western Union is very pleased with this arrangement where there is no system in place to catch the thieves who are more like Mafioso’s, but I after all we know for what they are!
I feel so sorry for these, and any other victims of internet robery, (scams).Their should be a way of policing the net. Restrictions and a system in place that make it impossible to take peoples money. If we can send a man to the moon and back, then surely it must be possible to solve earthly problems.
I am going to find where I can post a con i am caught up in at the moment.