My 18 year old son just received a letter from Leadway Inc. offering for him to be a "Mystery Shopper" for companies such as: Walmart, Home Depot, & JCPenny. They also offered one day lodging at hotels such as: Best Western or Days-Inn.
There was also a very real looking check enclosed in the envelope from a company called Audio Visual Associates Inc. located in Denville, NJ in the amount of $3968.50.
Information on the check:
Audio Visual Associates Inc.
1 Steward Court
Denville, New Jersey 07834
The envelope that was used has a return label with the following information:
Leadway Inc.
P.O. Box 6007-B
Montreal, QC H4R 1Y6
However, the letters that were enclosed in the envelope both have the following name and address:
Leadway Monitoring and Research Services
Mystery Shopping, Market Research, Training & Consulting
425 Gold Avenue Ste 2000
St. Laurent, PQ H3N 1S2
In the enclosed letter, these are the instructions that were given to him:
"On the first step of your assignment, you will pose as a potential customer shopping and spending $150.00 at one of the above-named retail locations. Secondly, you will be trained in financial transaction by sending Western Union/MoneyGram to our training agents in a different location to be specified by your Assignment Co-ordinator. Enclosed are the required funds to cover your assignment"
"Below is the breakdown of the enclosed check:
1. 3 hours probationary training pay @ the rate of $100.00 per hour...$300.00
2. Funds for shopping or Hotel Lodging...$150.00
3. Service Charge by Western Union/MoneyGram...$170.00
4. Required funds to be sent...$3348.50
TOTAL...$3968.50"
The bottom of the letter also states:
"NOTE: This paid training assignment is probationary and takes about three (3) hours to complete at the rate of $100.00 per hour. Your success will determine your future employment with us. Congratulations and good luck."
The reason that I chose to file a CANADA-COMPLAINTS.COM, is because after doing a little research about this company, I found that they often use a slightly different name and have used various different means of scamming people for years. In addition, they have somehow incorporated another company all together on the check that was enclosed. It appears that Audio Visual Associates is an actual legitimate company in New Jersey. I was also not able to find this particular scam anywhere in my research, the most common was apparently a Lottery scam. I would really hate to see anyone get ripped off by this company. If a person decides to cash this check, they would have access to that persons bank account.
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