Mystery Shop Scam

heskpesk

Im not too sure where to post this but thought this should be made known:

My brother in law received an email stating that a company was looking for Mystery Shoppers in his area. The company offered to deposit £200 into his account in preparation of the the Mystery Shops once bank details were given. For one moment he was tempted but soon realised it was too good to be true and declined. Later in the day he received a phone call from Nigeria (alarm bells) asking why he had not completed his bank details.

I know most people on here would not fall for but thought I would just make people aware of the scam attempt. I have not seen the email but believe Western Union is mentioned (more alarm bells!!)


Hope this helps

mightymole

thanks for the warning

heskpesk

Found this info on the scam:

Please be aware that there is currently a scam in the UK, US and Canada (several of our mystery shoppers have reported receiving the email) which works like this:
They ask you to carry out one or more assignments and say they will fund you in advance. BUT the funding they use is a money order for more than the cost of carrying out the assignments. They ask you to send them the surplus money. Only when you’ve done that do you discover your bank telling you that the money order was not valid.
Western Union money orders are often involved and a name associated with one of the items we have seen which bears all the hallmarks of this type of fraud is ‘Ken Coker’.
This type of scam is known as the ‘Advance Fee’ fraud. A similar scam runs in the UK with used cars.
We at Mystery Shoppers Ltd do occasionally fund upfront for very large spend purchases but we use cheques or direct bank transfers which should mean you can see when they are cleared and so can be sure you really do have the money.
These scammers are sending huge volumes of emails to random lists and don’t know that you really are a mystery shopper – you just happened to be on their list.