Secret-shopping scam: two for the price of one

Herb Weisbaum • Profile • E-mail

How would you like to go shopping in your spare time – and get paid thousands of dollars to do it?  That is the lure of mystery-shopper ads. Become a secret shopper, the ads say, and you will make good money, eat at fancy restaurants, shop at upscale clothing stores and stay at luxurious hotels – for free!

Warning: It’s not going to happen.

Most of these “help wanted” ads for mystery shoppers or secret shoppers are scams. The crooks use them to con people into paying a small fee – usually less than $100 – for information that is readily available for free.

Now, there is a new and much more costly twist to this old swindle. It combines the business opportunity scam with the counterfeit check scam.

“Two scams for the price of one,” says Charles Mattingly, CEO of the Better Business Bureau in Louisville, Ky. “It’s a deviously clever scam,” he says, “one of the most brilliant ones I’ve seen, if you can call a scam brilliant.”

Fall for it and you will lose thousands of dollars.

One victim’s story
In April, truck driver Doug Jacobson was looking for work when he spotted a classified ad in an Indianapolis newspaper. A Canadian company was looking for a “customer service evaluator.”

Jacobson called the number and got the job. No interview was required.

His first mystery-shopping assignment came in the mail. The packet of materials included a time sheet, a code of business conduct and ethics, a survey questionnaire, and surprise – a check for $2,500.

The letter from Phoenix Direct Marketing Group said this was “a paid training assignment” to be completed within 48 hours. Jacobson would be paid $125 per hour for two hours of work.

“I was out of a job at the time, so $250 sounded pretty good,” Jacobson told me.

Scam-buster tips Don’t Get Ripped Off: Watch out for scams that usually come through e-mail, in newspapers or online. Never pay for advice or job listings. Find Real Jobs: Visit sites run by the Mystery Shopping Providers Association or Volition, where mystery shoppers go to find work, ask questions and chat. Do a Background Check: Before accepting assignments, check the company’s reputation at the Better Business Bureau in that company’s local area as well as Volition’s forum. Source: Consumer Reports ShopSmart magazine

The letter said the objective of this assignment was to “evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of a payment system called MoneyGram, which is available at all Wal-Mart locations.”

Jacobson followed the instructions. He cashed the check, kept $250 and wired the rest of the money to the company’s address in Ontario, Canada. Jacobson couldn’t’ wait to get his next assignment.

Instead, about a week later he heard from his bank. The check was bogus and the bank wanted the $2,500 back.

“I felt pretty stupid,” Jacobson says. He tried calling Phoenix Direct to complain, but no one ever answered the phone.

I called, too, many times on various days. Each time I got a recorded message that said, “The person you are calling is unavailable at the moment.”

The losses can be staggering
The BBB’s Charles Mattingly has heard this story before. He says the counterfeit check looks legit. “So if you go to your bank to deposit or cash it, it will deposit real fine.”

By the time it bounces, the money has been wired out of the country and the victim must repay the bank. “That money is history,” Mattingly says. “It’s gone and they’ll never see it again.”

He’s seen victims of this scam lose as much as $5,000.

Phoenix Direct Marketing Group has an unsatisfactory record with the Better Business Bureau due to suspicious marketplace activities.

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