It is sad, but true – Mystery shopping jobs can be so cleverly deduced that they can even land you in jail! This is something that mystery shopping job scam victim, Randolph Shaheed, recently experienced. Here is an account of what happened to him and some other scams that you should look out for when you are scouring for secret shopping jobs.
Many people want to become mystery shoppers or secret shoppers because it involves making money easily performing tasks that you can do on your daily errands. It is fun and you can start earning almost immediately without any formal education. This is where the scammers take advantage and also play on people’s desperation and willingness to just accept any job that comes along.
The mystery shopping scam in question took place in Dallas where Shaheed entered a Wells Fargo Bank and proceeded to cash a check for a recent secret shopping job that he had completed. The DeSoto Police were called in to arrest him, as the bank teller noticed immediately that the check was a fake and thought that the man was trying to commit fraud.
Being a convicted felon and having served his time (over 25 years), Shaheed was released from prison and naturally it was assumed that he was guilty. He spent 4 days in jail and it was then discovered that the correspondence between himself and the supposed mystery shopping company was suspicious.
The District Attorney’s Office dropped the fraud charges once the evidence was seen by the prosecutor. The lawyer handling Shaheed’s case, Valencia Bush, told the media that she was handling 4 other cases where innocent people fell for the same scam and where arrested.
This particular scam involved a check, fake of course, which was supposed to be cashed at a bank and then part of the money wired to the “mystery shopping company” through Western Union in order to evaluate this money transfer service. The mystery shopper victim is instructed to keep the rest as payment and to use for evaluating other businesses which are explained in the correspondence.
Usually the scam works when the bank doesn’t notice the fake check until it is too late. By that time, the real money has been transferred to the scammers, and the remaining money been spent by the victim, who is then also arrested for fraud.
In another case, a woman in Masterton lost about $9000 when she was scammed by a secret shopping company who told her that as part of her assignment this money would be deposited into her Kiwibank account where she would have to withdraw it and transfer it through Western Union. This money, in actual fact, came from another Kiwibank user whose account had been compromised by a possible email phishing scam. Being difficult to determine where the liability lay, Kiwibank had debited the woman’s account while they investigated the matter.
There are a number of things that this woman should have noticed in the advertisement for the mystery shopping company, and this is what you have to be so careful of before you accept any mystery shopping job. Always check with the Better Business Bureau to see how long a particular company has been operating for, and also find out if they are legitimate by using the Mystery Shopping Providers Association. Nearly all legitimate offers are registered and approved by this organization. For more details on how you can avoid mystery shopper scams, visit Mystery Shopper Job Finder today.
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