I was living in Arkansas for a while and had a tough time finding a job there. A friend of mine said his father did "secret shopper" through various companies and was able to make a little extra money doing this. Desperate, I looked into it. I never got anywhere and eventually moved back to Milwaukee and found a job. Recently, I received a piece of mail - no return address, poorly printed, with a stamp from Canada - containing a letter and check for $2875.00.
The letter states that I was selected as a "secret customer" and was assigned, on a probationary period, to shop at Walmart and JCPenney and use MoneyGram - afterwards I was to write a review on all of these services. At first, I thought it may be legit, because I had looked into secret shopping in the past.
Further reading showed that the bulk of the check was to be sent via MoneyGram. This was where I grew concerned - afraid that I may end up in the middle of a money laundering scheme or just being robbed of $2875.00.
The letter went on to say that I was to contact an agent at an 800 number and get further instructions and have the check "activated." I wasn't sure how one activates a check.
Obviously a huge red flag went off over the fact that only $400 actually went to the shopping and the rest was to be MoneyGram'ed to someone.
After reading the other repots here, it's safe to assume that this is another US to Canada fraudulant check issue. Although the address on the check was a Dallas address, the letter came from Canada. Searches for companies of this name and at this address yielded nothing close to a "secret shopper" program.
I'm planning to contact the bank on the check just to notify them - not sure what (if anything) could be done.
I just wanted to warn people that it's very easy to be taken off-guard - it seemed like it was legit at first, but a little research and you can prevent yourself from losing a lot of money, and worse, getting in trouble with the law.
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