Hi, I received a check in the mail from Corporate Research International for over $2,000.00 with instructions for 3 unrelated assignments. I was instructed to take $400. as my payment and use the rest for the assignments. This is the first contact I have had since responding to a Mystery Shopper ad on Craigslist. I have not received any information or documents to sign prior to this check arriving. I have emailed Stericycle for verification but have not received a response. I have received a text message and an email indicating to contact David Page with Corporate Research International after depositing the check so funds could be released. Has anyone been contacted in this way before? Is this the way they sign up new shoppers? I am a bit wary that this a scam.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2015 07:06PM by Hersheybar2015.

Total scam. Do not attempt to cash the check, it is bogus, will bounce and the bank will come back to you for the money and fees for the bounce and hopefully not any charges for fraud, though certainly bouncing a check will show up on your banking records.

Mystery shopping works as follows: You register with a company, usually on their secure website; they accept you as a shopper and sometimes you will have selected your own user name and password, sometimes they will send you user name and password; you go to their website and check their job board to see if there are any shops you want to do and can do within the time frame they have; you either self assign or request the job. If you self assign, you are now responsible to perform the work and so need to check any guidelines and instructions carefully and perform the shop within the time frame. If you only request the work, keep checking back every day or so to see if it has been assigned to you because not all companies are great about letting you know you got the shop. If it has been assigned to you, then you check the guidelines and instructions and perform the shop within the time frame. Then you file the report along with whatever proofs of visit may be required. Often this is a receipt from a purchase required by the shop. COMPANIES DO NOT SEND YOU MONEY IN ADVANCE TO GO SHOP WITH. Now you wait and if the editor has questions, they will contact you. Depending on the policies of the company you are working with, you will be paid somewhere between two weeks and three months. Your pay plus reimbursement for a required purchase most frequently comes out to a total of $5-$20.

No legitimate MS company sends out big checks in advance! This is a SCAM! DO NOT cash that check! In about 10 days your bank would discover that it was a fraud and you would be on the hook, legally, for the funds.

The sender is hiding behind the name of a real MS company that would never pay in advance!

This is NOT how shoppers get signed up. Moreover, Craig's List is full of MS scams.

If you go to the New Mystery Shoppers area of this forum you can read all about how to sign up with legitimate MS companies, using their secure sites. At the bottom of each page there is also a list of legitimate MS companies and links to their actual sites.

You have landed at just the right place for advice on how to start your MS business.

Thank you. I was pretty sure I would be best served following my instincts and doing some research first. That's how I found this forum. Glad I did!

Stick around and become a mystery shopper. It doesn't pay as well as the scam sounded like, but the money is real.

That's too good to be true! If I'm were on your shoes, I will question it also. Being new in MS, we really have a lot of things to learn first especially which is legit and which is not. Good thing is that there are people here who are willing to give an advice.