Friday, July 9, 2010

Beware of Craigs List Secret Shopper Cheque Scam

My daughter almost got taken in a fake cheque moving scam advertised through Craigs list as a job posting for secret shopper of various online and offline stores. Fortunately, we (parents) found out what she did before it was too late. How does it work?

We arrived home from work and at our door was a couriered envelope addressed to my daughter and addressed from a residence in Ithaca, NY, Min Park. In the envelope was a cashiers cheque drawn on the Bank of Nova Scotia for $3,900. payable in cash to the bearer (my daughter). Who made out the cheque? The Ottawa-Carleton Education Network. The bank is legit and from what we can tell, so is the Ottawa-Carleton Education Network which is a non-profit organization.

We immediately questioned this as my daughter had no idea why she would receive this cheque. She, needless to say, was very excited to go cash the cheque but she also knew this was not only mysterious it was wrong until we confirmed the legitimacy of this cheque. Cooler heads prevailed and we began to google every piece of information we had and yet we found nothing to suggest it may be nothing more than some strange clerical error. We decided to call Ottawa-Carleton the next day once we confirmed they were not open in the evening. We did call the next day but not before we found out what was going on.

My daughter received an email on her mobile phone shortly after we finished our exhaustive online research that ended with no real answers one way or the other. The email was from the company that supposedly hired her to be a secret shopper. News to her. The email instructed her by stating we confirmed you signed receipt of the envelope. Not true. It was sitting on our door step when we arrived home. The email went on to instruct her to deposit the cheque in her bank account. Then she was to keep her total fees and expenses of $520. yet further instructed her to send them a cheque to the Philippines of $3,400. WE NOW KNEW WHAT WAS GOING ON...SHE WAS BEING SCAMMED!

The scam; the bank clears the cheque and gives her the cash within days. The bank actually finds out the cheque is fake later and comes back to her to repay and reserves the right to charge her with fraud. Wait! It gets worse. We called the police and we were told that this is a very common scam and because we did not cash the cheque we are not victimized and even if we did cash the cheque, all they could do is file a report. Reason? Because of the difficulty of tracking the paper trail to the con artists behind this who are international and in many cases in countries with no police and inter-governmental co-operation. "It is just not worth the effort for anything under $10,000.", stated the police officer. This is the genius of the scam. The con artists know this crime will never be pursued. The police told me that all we can do is what we are doing and that is to educate the public. First, we were told, is report it to Craigs list. Before we could, the job posting my daughter responded to had already been removed. As I'm sure it is always done for everyone of these scam ads. The police also advise us to contact phonebusters.com. We will and we also contacted Ottawa-Carleton who said 'Oh no, not you too'. They have been receiving calls on this for the last few days. We were the only one, as of yet, who did not cash the cheque and they asked us if we could send it to them for their own investigation. We will send them the cheque as it holds no value to anyone other than them.

I'm glad I have this blog to post our story and hope you pass it along to as many people as possible. Through the power of our online social network we can educate many people to watch for this scam that preys on honest people who only want 'extra income' or employment.

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