I'll try to do this without breaking into a string of obscenities. A few weeks ago I was exploring some options to augment my pension and came across an advertisement in a local newspaper for "Customer Service Representative. There was no local address or telephone number listed in the ad but rather a URL for a web site operated by a company called "Coredata Service Solutions". The ad instructed applicants to log on and fill out the online emploment application for consideration.
After going to the site I found the application form and was somewhat surprised to see that it requested little more information other than name, street address, email address and telephone number - nothing at all covering past employment, experience, back or qualifications. While I thought this odd I assumed that the job was not difficult or technical and past experience probably didn't matter so I completed the form and didn't think anything further about it.
A day later I received an email from an individual named John Whitby who identified himself as a Group Project Coordinator with Coredata. This email originated not from a company email address but rather from a gmail account. The email indicated that they were in the process of conducting an in depth background check to ascertain if I was a suitable candidate for the advertised position and would be in touch again when that process was completed. Again I found this more than a little odd given that they didn't have sufficient information to properly conduct any kind of meaningfull background check but, as the email also indicated that the position was not, in fact, customer service but rather a "mystery shopping" job (something I had no interest in whatsoever) I deleted the email and forgot about Mr. Whitby and his "company".
Within a week I received a letter by regular mail from Coredata. The letter, which showed an address and telephone number in Ottawa, Ontario Canada, congratulated me on being chosen as a Coredata Mystery Shopper and included pages of what alleged to be training and reprting material.
It also contained what alleged to be a money order in the amount of $1, 300.00 drawn on a chartered Canadian bank and instructions on my first mystery shopping "assignment": I was to immediately cash the money order and retain $150.00 as my wage and wire the balance via Western Union to an address in England as Coredata had been retained to check the qualty of service being provided by Western Union worldwide.
As much as I'd like to think that my time is worth $150.00 for 10 minutes work ($900, 00 an hour) and as much as I'd like to believe that a company would send over a thousand dollars to someone they've never met, interviwed or spoken to there was obviously something both very wrong and very, very amatuerish about the transaction so I presented the alleged money order to my local bank. It took all of about 10 seconds to ascertain that the item was a very poor forgery.
The bank retained the forged money order and I immediately filed a report with my local police as well as contacting both the RCMP (Canada's national police force) and the Ontario Provincial Police (as the document originated in their jurisdiction). I didn't get any response from the RCMP at any time but did get an answer from the OPP indicating that they couldn't investigate anything reported by email.
Obviously I was more than a little angry. Not so much because the scum had attempted to scam me out of $1, 300 but more because they assumed that I was foolish enough to fall for it - so I emailed Whitby at his gmail address indicating a certain level of displeasure. Within 3 hours I received a telephone call from an unnamed individual with a strong southern accent indicating that he was an investigator looking into the Coredata scams and that I shouldn't conduct any correspondence with them or report the incident to any police force as I might jeopardize that investigation. Given that the only email I'd sent Coredata was to a public/gmail address I had more than a little difficulty understanding how the "investigator" has intercepted it. I obviously terminated the call. I also received an email back for "Whitby" within a few hours with the message: "Good for U".
So after a little research I found that Coredata is the most recent name used by this little band of scum-suckers. The web site has since been shut down but they're, almost certainly, up and running under another name and URL now. for more backgrounf go to https://www.coredata.ofingo.com and to https://www.coredatascam.hostwebs.org
Seems to me that, aside from whatever legal/police methods might be available the best way to stop these clowns would be for the newspapers to stop accepting advertisements from advertisers offering this kind of thing. It'd take one phone call for the paper to find out that there's a scam going on - particularly whwn some of them are already running editorial content on the subject of mystery shopping scams.
Anyone else got any thoughts?
Getthesecreeps
Kelowna, British Columbia
Canada
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