I received a wonderful letter with a check for $1290.45 on Monday, April 16 from Global Market Research (GMR) telling me that I was selected to be a secret shopper.
The money i recieved was to be used on two "assignments", and then a portion of that money was to be my pay. I had called up this so called "Joseph Skinner" the group project director, and he told me to go cash the check and call him after that was finished. Then when I called back he told me I would have to send money, $920.00 plus $86.00 for processing, to a Dan Thomas that lives in London, Canada through Western Union.
After I had finished with that, I was supposed to call him, and send him a report on how the company did in taking care of me. I then faxed the report to him, and then called him to tell him that i had finished, and he had told me to then choose a place to go listed, and i chose to go to best buy, with another $84.00 allocated to use for buying things, and then reporting on how the service was, and how the store looked.
When I arrived back home, I wrote the report after calling him, and then faxed it to him. I then asked when I would receive the next assignment, and he answered over the weekend (I had done all of this on Wednesday April 18). I received a call on Friday from my bank telling me that the check I cashed was a bad check, and inquired as to how I received this check. I told them, and then they told me it was probably a fraud.
The main thing that irked me was that if they saw the check seemed suspicious, why would they not tell me "oh, this looks kind of fishy, you should check this out more." But shouldn't a check show up a red flag when it's put into the system?
After the bank called me, I immediately proceeded to call this Joseph Skinner, and naturally he claimed the check should be good, and that he would see what was going on, and that he would call me back.
I never received a call back, and then when I tried calling him back multiple times, the automated operator would simply come back with a "Joseph Skinner is unavailable right now, forwarding you to voice mail." I have not spent any more of the money, and I still have the $200.45 that was my "pay" but I do not have the $1090.00 since that was the money I sent through Western union and used for best buy.
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