I received a letter the other day from a company claiming to be Regency Research, a division of Regency Financial Corp (which does apprear to be a real business).. They claim to be a mystery shopping, market research, and consulting company.
The letter basically says that the check can be deposited into my account and that when the money posts to the account i am supposed to call them and they will tell me where i am to spend $100 of the money they have sent me, $400 would be paid to me every week of training (3months) after i send in my evalutaion sheets and they would also send me $100 for each trip to the store they choose for me. After the 3 months i would be getting paid $500 a week plus the $100 for shopping. All i had to do was to send the remaining money back to them via western union or money gram!
Sounds like a great way to make some fast cash and shop, right? WRONG! After doing some investigating i found that these scams are all alike and what they do is have you deposit or cash these checks and send them the money before the bank finds out that the checks are fake or stolen. Which would leave you responisble to pay this money back. I read countless stories about this and it broke my heart to hear how much people lost to these assholes!
The names that were used on my letter were Sharon Parker and Stan Allen-which are supposedly account managers. The letter was signed by a dwane frazer. I called and reported this to phone busters and that is when i realized all of the grammatical errors in the letter and inconsistancies with phone numbers, etc... Oh and big surprise all the phone numbers are canadian and usually cell phones. The envelop was postmaked from canada with a canadian stamp on it, which i did find a bit piculiar. The guy at phonebusters said catching these people is like trying to catch people running red lights. I have contacted my local news channel to make people aware that this scam is going on, and i was the second caller to inform them about this.
Oh and by the way, they did a pretty good job with the check-it looks very authentic-even has watermarks. The check comes from citizens bank and trust. Beware people the names and locations may be different but the stories all seem to be the same!
I really hope that my story can help others before they make this mistake that i almost made myself. These people have to be stopped! If anyone knows of anything else i can do please let me know. If anyone has any questions, feel free to contact me..
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