A “secret shopper” scam letter has surfaced in the Monroe area that tries to entice the recipient into cashing a bogus check for $3,990 in order to test the MoneyGram services offered through Wal-Mart stores.
Thomas Harmon of Monroe got one of the letters advising him that his application as a customer service representative for Universal Research Inc. had been approved.
Trouble is, Mr. Harmon never had applied for such a position and never heard of Universal Research.
The letter instructed him to cash the JP Morgan Chase bank check, keep $400 for himself, and wire the rest to a third location that would be revealed if he called a phone number to validate the payment.
Included with the letter and check was a “Customer Satisfaction Evaluation Tool” to rate the service received at the Wal-Mart service desk.
The Harmons didn’t fall for the ruse and noticed that the postmark on the letter was from Canada, a common source of telemarketing and postal scams.
“With the economy the way it is, a lot of people might fall for this,” Mr. Harmon said.
Felicia George, an inspector with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Detroit, said it appears to be another version of a common check scam.
“Its sounds like it’s a little bit of a twist on some of the counterfeit money order scams we’ve been looking at,” Ms. George said.
Scams attempting to trick consumers into cashing the bogus check and forwarding money to a third party have been common around the country over the past few years with several variations involving MoneyGram and Wal-Mart. If the checks are cashed by financial institutions – and they often are – the individuals who cash them are responsible for the lost funds.
The Internet Crime Complaint Center says the secret shopper and counterfeit check scams are numerous and often invoke the names of reputable banks or corporations. Victims receive bad checks, are instructed to deposit them, and then are asked to wire a percentage of the money to a third party, while using the rest of the money to complete their assignments. The scam succeeds when the fraudster is able to convert the victim’s wire transfer into cash before the bank realizes that the initial payment is counterfeit.
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OK – we fell for this…or did we. We deposited the check and waited a week to make sure the funds cleared. Did we not wait long enough? I guess we will have to wait and see.