Beware of Sterling Consumer Surveys!

Don’t you hate junk mail? I do! It seems that you always get it—that and bills—and rarely get anything worthwhile. I have been waiting for a check to arrive from something I did online, and so when I picked up the mail yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to see one envelope that, when I held it just so, appeared to have a check inside. Strangely, though, it didn’t have a return address, just my name printed on the front. If I hadn’t seen the check through the paper, I would have thought it was a letter from a friend, perhaps, or a credit card offer.

So I hurried inside and opened the envelope. To my infinite surprise, the check wasn’t the one I had been expecting at all! I had been expecting something in the neighborhood of $12, and here I was holding in my hand a check for nearly $5,000!

I started turning the check over to see if it was real, and looking for words like, "If you cash this check, you are agreeing to _______", but it appeared real and didn’t have anything strange on it. So I began to read the letter. It informed me that my job search for mystery shopping (which I probably filled out by accident) had been found and I had been hired as a mystery shopper. I was to start by going to MoneyGram and sending $4,450 to a Jennifer [my last name] in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, as if she were my relative. Then I was to fill out the info on the back and send it in by fax. Following this, I would be approved to use $100 of the amount sent me to shop at one of several popular stores, and when it was all said and done, I would have $300 left over.

Now, right away a red flag went off in my mind. You see, I am a former mystery shopper. (I mystery shopping to pay off my credit card after my baby was born.) I know how mystery shopping works. You sign up with a company, they match you to a job or you pick from a list of possibilities. Once your assignment is confirmed, you have to do the assignment before they will send you payment (which usually arrives in anywhere from 15 to 45 days). Sometimes your expenses can be reimbursed, but not always. The only time I got money beforehand was a check I was supposed to cash at a bank to mystery shop the bank, and the check had to be from that bank. The check was for $16 and some odd cents.

So I did the smart thing: I called the bank listed on the check to see if the account was even in existence. When the automated system assured me that it was, I then called the bank and told a representative about it. Then this morning I looked up the company on the check and informed them that someone is printing checks with their account number and name and using them in a scam.

What would happen if I cashed the check is that the check would probably cash (if I did it fast enough), and I would send the bulk of it by MoneyGram to someone in Canada who would make a fake ID to go pick it up. I would have the remainder, but they would have effectively stolen money from a real company and included me in the larceny. I’m not about to get in trouble with that. And if the company were to track down the casher of the check, I could be liable for the full $4,995, while the unknown person in Canada who picked up my money would get off scott free.