Some of you newbies may be tempted to answer emails that say you can make $200 a shop. They say they will send you a check for about $2000 and you are to take it to the bank and cash it. You keep $200 as your mystery shopping payment and take the rest to Western Union and do a wire transfer. Your job is to evaluate the service provided by the Western Union employee. If you agree, you will be sent a legitimate-looking check that almost any bank will cash.

It's a scam! Within 2 weeks, the check will bounce and the bank will take the full amount of the check out of your account. You're not protected like you would be with a stolen credit card. You are out $2000!

First rule of mystery shopping - mystery shopping companies do not pay you up front! If the shop requires you to buy something, you have to spend your own money and then you are reimbursed.

Another sign of a scam MSC? Poor English grammar and spelling. MSCs usually have outstanding writing skills.

Anyway, a reporter from the Chicago Sun-times decided to answer a scam email, and chose a mystery shopping scam! She took it all the way from the initial email to where the "mystery shopping company" stopped emailing her. Along the way, she talks with a bank, a Postal Service inspector, and Western Union about the scam. Really good info.

The reporter pretends to be Jan Brady, and mentions the Brady Bunch characters in her emails. It's hysterical. And the MSC never catches on.

[www.suntimes.com]

That was definitely a good read!

I had to stop from laughing the entire time through it! We get those "Rental Scams" all of the time when we have to put up an ad for a room in our rental house.

Sometimes I play with the sender, sometimes I don't. I like using cartoon character names for addresses and such. Or, I may send my address back as something like, "South Scammer Lane" or "North Idiot Drive". I have an email account I use specifically for "sign ups" so it's a junk-all catch-all spam account!

I would definitely recommend Newbies reading this though!

That was a fun read