A Hazel Dell couple are out more than $2,000 after getting suckered in by a mystery-shopper scam, and they’d like to warn others to watch out.
Les Burger, who lives in Hazel Dell, said his wife, Julie Burger, late last month saw an interesting email item about a mystery-shopper program. Les said Julie had been curious about doing mystery-shopper work, so she clicked, then clicked some more.
She received a check for $2,100, with instructions to cash it, then use the cash to buy several prepaid debit cards at Safeway. It would have left $170 extra, he said.
She was to buy the cards and later rate the quality of parts of her shopping experience. Les said the instructions asked his wife to note how clean Safeway’s floors looked, its customer service and things like that.
She cashed the check, bought the cards and kept the leftovers as her payment.
Later, Julie received more instructions asking for the numbers on the debit cards. Somewhere along the line, Julie mentioned it all to her husband, and he thought it sounded fishy.
He called his adult children, who said it sounded like a scam, so they called the card company. After a long time on hold, they were transferred to the fraud department.
“One guy gets on the line and tells me that the three $500 cards were already cashed, money gone,” Les said.
The last card had yet to be cashed, and the card company asked him for a scanned image of his drivers license to help prevent it from being cashed. Having soured on prepaid debit cards, Les declined.
The check, they learned, was bogus. When they contacted their credit union, staff there said there was nothing to be done, leaving the Burgers on the hook for the $2,100 they cashed.
The Burgers reported what happened to the sheriff’s office and talked to a manager at the Safeway as well.
“They’re aware of it happening all the time,” he said, adding that he commends the initiative of the woman he spoke with at the grocery store. “She takes it upon herself, she said, to remind people, ‘You’re getting a card — do you know what you’re doing?'”
“So we came home, shaking our heads, saying, well, we’re out 21 hundred bucks,” he said.
In hindsight, the check and information all looked remarkably legitimate, Les said.
“It’s quite a well put-together scam,” he said. “Obviously there are enough silly people like us around (so) this guy, gal, whatever can make a quick two grand.”
Legitimate mystery-shopper opportunities, in which retailers hire shoppers to make a purchase at a store or restaurant as a way to audit their services, do exist. In general, it’s a part-time or extra gig for people, and they get a small payment or keep whatever they buy.
Plenty of mystery-shopper jobs, however, are used as fronts for scams, according to the Federal Trade Commission, and there are warning signs for shady operations.
Fake promoters may ask marks to pay or register. Neither is ever necessary.
Also, avoid “guarantees” for a job or companies that sell directories of companies that need mystery shoppers, and never wire any money.
The FTC says victims are sometimes “hired” to evaluate a money transfer service such as Western Union or MoneyGram.
Victims get a check with instructions to cash it, then wire the money. Because the law requires banks to make the money from a deposited check available faster than it can take to ID a bum check, the victim can end up on the hook for that money, like the Burgers.
The FTC recommends thoroughly researching any mystery-shopper listing. The agency recommended the Mystery Shopping Providers Association website, at www.mspa-na.org, for a free and legitimate listing of mystery shopper applications.
Meanwhile, Burger, a physician and retired Army general, said he and his wife have learned of people getting swindled for much more money.
“Lesson learned. We like to think we’re smarter than all that, and we’re kind of kicking ourselves that we did something so stupid,” he said.
He quoted the apocryphal P.T. Barnum line about a sucker being born every minute.
“Nothing’s changed!”
