I recently received a letter from Consumer Service Group Inc that offered a big pay check to me for becoming a Secret Shopper. I was sent a check for $2855, drawn on a Wells Fargo Bank, from a real company based in California.
The letter offered me a paycheck of $350 (with a note that promised my pay would increase after the first PTT (Probation Training Test). I was to go spend $50 at Walmart and evaluate their service to me as customer. I was to do the same at JC Pennys. Of course, I got to keep the items I purchased.
THEN I was to take $2290 (plus transfer fees) and choose either Western Union or Money Gram and wire the money. The letter did not say where it was to go. I was given instructions to call the company's office and speak with my Account Rep. I would receive further instructions.
But I tracked the phone number... it wasn't a company number at all. It was a cell phone that was listed in Canada. And the name on the letterhead gave a Canadian marketing group's address, NOT THE CALIFORNIA ADDRESS THAT WAS ON THE CHECK.
The whole thing was very poorly done... cheap paper, cheap envelope... even the company logos for the companies that CSG represented in their research were cut and pasted on the original copy of the letter.
I called Wells Fargo bank, as well as the company whose name was on the check, to notify them of the scam. Wells Fargo could tell me that the account number on the check was valid... but I probably shouldn't cash it.
And the company who the check supposedly came from told me that someone had stolen their checks, or gotten a copy and had them made. THEY were covered by fraud protection, but anyone who unsuspectingly cashed one, would get hit with the financial backlash of spending $2855 that didn't really exist in their bank accounts.
Be careful, folks. It's hard enough keeping money in our pockets, much less in our country. We don't need to be sending it across the border to Canada... which was where this would have gone.
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