Mystery Shopper ad on Craig's List placed by David Bircham and Thomas Brolin DBA Magma Consulting. $300 for conducting customer service survey for Moneygram. Email sent vette-ing potential mystery shoppers. Verification email of acceptance sent. Additional email with instruction for conducting a mystery shopping experience and also a professional Magma Consulting PDF doc sent. FedEx of $3,600 check from some LLP with an area code (phone number) of 854. And then a call from area code 772.
Instructions to cash check - go to Moneygram and make serious observations so that you could later report back on survey your experience. Moneygram sent to Yvonnia Houston in Greenbrae, CA. Then you pass along Moneygram reference # to David Bircham so that Yvonnia can pick up the money. Of course it turns out it was all a scam and because $2,500 is the max at Moneygram - I'm out $2,600 - $2,500 max plus $95 Moneygram fee (vs. The full $3,600) - and of course whatever my bank charges for depositing a bad check. I'm not stupid normally.
Believe me - this operation is smooth enough to fool me. And Craig's List is pathetic for allowing these types of non-vetted ads on their list. After I did a search - information on Magma, Yvonnia Houston, Peekskill, NY, Mystery Shopping and more & all were all over the internet as fraud/scam. Craig's List should have known with enough past and present evidence of scam for the types of ads they are running. Now I of course know (a little too late) to do a full internet search before conducting any business & even if it looks completely legit.
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