Head of Human Resources,
620 Mendelssohn Ave N
Minneapolis, MN 55427-4310
Secret Shopper®
[www.secretshopper.com]

Attn: Mystery Shopper,

You have been chosen to be one of our Mystery shopper.You will be evaluating Wal-Mart Stores and Western Union Services in your
neighborhood, kindly check out for one Wal-Mart store and one Western union Agent outlet you will like to evaluate, make sure the store and the outlet you will choose are close to your area as much as possible.You will have to send the name and address of the two location to us, Please note that you are to act Cool, Calm and Confident through out the period which you will be carrying out your survey at the store, in order not to arouse any suspicion.You will be shopping at Wal-Mart stores and also make a transaction at the Western union, You will write a report about the customer services, you will send your report back to us via Email, you will have to use the following pointers to prepare your report :

1) How long it took you to get services.
2)Ambiance/Outlook of the Shop/Outlet
3) Smartness of the attendant
4)Customer service professionalism
5)Reaction of personnel under pressure
6)Information that you think would be helpful
7)Your comments and impressions.

YOU WILL BE PAID $200 PER DUTY

A package will be sent to you via courier,inside the package you will find your Compensation payment which would be in the form of money orders/ cashiers check,which you would be required to cash at your bank so you would use the funds to carry out your surveying process.You must not use your personal money to complete any of the surveying process and there will be no reimbursement of any kind since we are providing you with all the fund you will need to carry out the survey.An Evaluation Instruction will be given to you through email, this will tell you what to do at the Wal-Mart and he Western union location and how to expend the fund at each location.Please reply this Email and give us the name and address of the Wal-Mart and
Western union location you will be evaluating.

PLEASE KINDLY PROVIDE YOUR INFORMATION BELOW TO PROCEED ON FIRST ASSIGNMENT IF INTERESTED:
Full Legal Name :
Full Physical Address :
City :
State :
Zip code :
Country :
Age:
Nationality :
Home and Cell # :
Present Occupation:
Email:

Yours sincerely.
Mark Smith

YUP! You've been SCAMMED!

I love getting those - quite frankly, here's my reply - and yes, I have a potty mouth when I reply. (and I ONLY use my JUNK EMAIL account!! I've got one set up for when I sign up for subscriptions, and store rewards, etc):

PLEASE KINDLY PROVIDE YOUR INFORMATION BELOW TO PROCEED ON FIRST ASSIGNMENT IF INTERESTED:
Full Legal Name : Ms. Kiss My Ass
Full Physical Address : 10000 Your An Idiot Drive
City : Dumbo
State : MZ
Zip code : 00001
Country : None
Age: 101
Nationality : Martian
Home and Cell # : (010)123-4567
Present Occupation: Answering this stupid SCAM
Email: gof***yourself@dumbass.com


Believe it or not - I've actually gotten REPLIES back when I've filled out these things! Then I start having fun and really playing their scammer games!


PS: READ that email! Now really - WHO says, "Kindly Provide"? Look at all the spelling and grammatical errors.

klhofbauer, you sound just as classy as I do when responding to these scammers. I like to have a bit of fun with them too and it usually takes them awhile to realize I'm just messing with their emotions.

From the speech pattern and vocabulary you can tell they're from Nigeria/ Mali. My husband was in the Peace Corps there for 10 years and became fluent in several native languages. I can imagine the reaction when they get a blistering reply in their own language telling them exactly where the bear went in the woods.

I totally figured it was what I thought it was. However, I had not really filled out anything on any websites. So, what I could not figure out is how they got my information.

Do you vetrans get a lot of this? Do you think any of these companies sell your information?

Do you feel comfortable putting your personal and personal "identifier" information on some of these websites just to "potentially" get considered for a job?

I just felt like I should get a job before I provide them with my payment information.

Thanks in advance for the information.

I got these long before I started mystery shopping and have seen no increase that could directly relate. If anything they ebb and flow depending on the economy in order to prey upon desperation. Most likely they are sent as blind copies to any number of variations on a e-mail address at the same time. It costs little to nothing to send the e-mails so it takes very few victims to make it cost-effective for them.

Interestingly enough the emails that tend to be the first contact for spammers all come to my one of my regular emails and have NEVER come to the email I use for shops. I am a very private person where it comes to the internet. I don't use MySpace or Facebook or Linked-in or those kinds of sites. Although I have been involved with eBay for years, only the most limited of personal information is available there.

It is the email I use for eBay that receives the majority of the scammy type offers and I don't know whether it is because that is probably my longest duration email or whether it is because that is the email I use for any couponing, contests and registration with non-shopping companies. It may even be that it is the one hit because a friend insists on forwarding me every 'cute' and 'inspirational' email she receives and latching my address along with everybody else in her address book to an email that already has many generations of email addresses from forwarding. That alone is certainly a spammer and scammer's dream to get one of those with all those juicy 'live' email addresses. Friends who insist on including me in such forwards never get my 'real' email addresses.

But I have never had checks sent to me and would never respond to an email such as you received.

*Exactly* what Flash says!

MoToCo - same thing (Flash, GMTA!)! I have a "Financial" email address. Absolutely NO one except our bills/banking get that email address. I've gotten 2 Viagra emails in 5 years in that account.

I then have a junk email address - I use it for well, junk! I use it when I have to sign up for rewards, or I want to get something from a company online. It's also my Craigs List account email. Like Flash, it's also the one a dear lady uses and sends all those FWD's to! (ha, it's my MIL, love her to death, but we can't get her to learn to delete the FWD emails!)

I also own 2 domains, and right now I have 7 email addresses set up. I use one specific domain email address for MS'ing. I have never (knock, knock) gotten spam in any of my domain name email accounts. It's possible they have better spam blockers, dunno.

MoToCo - I truthfully wouldn't worry. Personally - set up an email account that is SPECIFIC to your Mystery Shopping venture. Don't give it to anyone except companies you sign up with. I have had no problems sending in SS#'s, personal information. Like I said, my mystery shop email address has had no spamming or attempts for scams!