I belong to a couple of legitimate Secret Shopping Services organizations. I received an e-mail from "Forward Business LLC" stating they were contacting me based on my resume' submitted to CareerBuilders.com, to which I have also recently been submitting applications and resumes. Forward Business LLC stated they have some Secret Shopping Services for which my experience would be perfect. They also state you can earn $1500 per month eating in restaurants and completing surveys online evaluating the service and quality of food. They did not actually give me a website in the e-mail. So I entered their name "Forward Business LLC" into a search engine, and then I saw all the "bogus company", "scam", etc. Tags attached to the same name. Otherwise, I would have believed it was a legitimate offer to mystery shop. The email did have typos and incomplete sentences that did not make sense. Prior to this email, about 2 weeks ago, I also received another email from Secret Shopper Services ("Secret Shopping Services" is legitimate) stating that they would send me funds (which they did 2 days later by U.S. Postal Service Special Delivery) to deposit into my checking account and I should immediately (or the next business day if my own bank balance did not cover the amount deposited) withdraw the same amount, minus $200 which was my weekly fee. I was instructed to make a $50 purchase at Walmart, then take the remaining amount (less Western Union wire transfer fees) and send it to the the next shopper on the list, which was only a name, city and state (no street address or phone number). They claim to be evaluating Walmart service, and services of other money wire transfer companies so they could compare their own newly started money wire transfer business. I was suspicious because they asked me to immediately withdraw funds to wire on to someone else. I took the $963.00 Moneygram check (drawn on Citizens Bank of California) to a Citizens Bank locally in my home State of Delaware, and was told they could not cash it and that the bank was not affiliated with them. I went on the Moneygram website and got a phone number, then called to verify the funds. The Moneygram was no good. The number of this Moneygram had been cashed back in July (it was dated June) for $75.00, and had no remaining funds available. So I reported this to the FCC (a website given to me by the Moneygram people), and also the to Postmaster at my local post office, since this also consitutes mail fraud, a federal offense. So watch out also for this scam, under the guise of mystery or secret shopping.
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