New to this and very wary!

Call the police and call the bank. Now. Many large banks have 24/7 customer service, and unless you're in a small or rural town, there should be someone at the police department to whom you can make a preliminary report. They can also advise you about contacting authorities where the bank on which the check was drawn is located. You need more help at this point than you can get here!

I learn something new every day, but not everyday!
I've learned to never trust spell-check or my phone's auto-fill feature.

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Yeah they said the same to me. "Saw your resume on your school's career website". I recently graduated and my resume was on the school's site. However, I just turned 52 and the warning bells went off in my head IMMEDIATELY. Representatives from the real Reality Based Group contacted me through this forum and assured me that this was a scam, which we all know is true. Lesson learned: If something sounds too good to be true... It usually is. I truly hope you are able to get your money back LukeMann. Most of us don't need to be scammed like this. Money is tight as it is.

Sorry to hear that this happened to you. You're not the only person to fall for this--it's the one that the scammers are using a lot at the moment because it evidently seems to work. I hope there's some kind of recourse for you... please let us know how it turns out because it will help us to warn and instruct other potential victims!

"The future ain't what it used to be." --Yogi Berra

So I took all of your advice and called my bank this afternoon. I deposited two of the checks before I read this but luckily I only sent one via moneygram. The bank told me that both the checks cleared and everything was fine with them. I don't know where to go from here cause I don't want any attention drawn to this situation if the checks were actually real. I don't think this person is using fake checks I think they could be swindling the money from other people's/company's bank accounts.

It's good that those checks have cleared, LukeMann, but the checks were probably forgeries. That is not something your bank will know until they are returned to them as forgeries. That generally takes about 10 days, so I am betting the checks will be charged back to your account and you will end up owing a bunch of money. I hope you are not deceived by hearing right now that everything was fine with them and that you do not send another moneygram. You will be out even more money. Best of luck. I hope you will post again 10 days from now and let us know what happened. Best of luck.

Luke, the bank will not know for some time that they are fraudulet. All they see now is that their routine "hold" period has expired. DO NOT send any more funds to anyone or use any more of the funds on hand, please! This is a well known fraud.

Based in MD, near DC
Shopping from the Carolinas to New York
Have video cam; will travel

Poor customer service? Don't get mad; get video.

@LukeMann wrote:

So I took all of your advice and called my bank this afternoon. I deposited two of the checks before I read this but luckily I only sent one via moneygram. The bank told me that both the checks cleared and everything was fine with them. I don't know where to go from here cause I don't want any attention drawn to this situation if the checks were actually real. I don't think this person is using fake checks I think they could be swindling the money from other people's/company's bank accounts.

Since there are only a couple of banks open on Sundays, the bank could not have done much verification. Just because someone at the bank told you the money has not yet been charged back to your account does not mean that the checks cleared and everything was fine with them.

I'm very sympathetic to you, but if your post accurately depicts a situation that has happened, then you have been scammed. If you don't know it yet, you will know it for sure in 10 days or less.

I'm not sending anymore money for this person I know for sure it is a scam. I'm not going to spend any money until I know what's going on. I deposited one of the checks on Tuesday so if I hear about one of them it'll be that one soon. I'm going to call the bank tomorrow to see what's going on again. Do you think the bank will allow me to set up some sort of repayment plan or will they demand the money right away? Thanks for all of your help on here, maybe I need to get a real mystery shopper job to make some money to pay this off if they say they're fradulant.

Hate to burst your bubble but for the amount of money that you will owe, it would take months or even years to make enough MS'ing money to pay back the fraudulent checks and the fees associated with them.

Just out of curiosity, what was your mindset on being paid large amounts of money for not doing any work? It really seems like common sense to me unless you are playing the lottery and win a jackpot.

My thoughts were that it was a legit business that found me through my schools resume posting website (which I have been using a lot recently to look for a job) I just got an on campus job but thought this would be a great way to make some extra money. I looked into the company that the woman said she worked for (Reality Based Group) which was an actual legitimate company that she was impersonating. I did the first task and reviewed the Moneygram service and filled out an actual report form that she sent to me it all seemed so legit. Then she asked me to do the same task again which seemed extra strange so instead of looking up the company I looked up her info which brought me to this website and confirmed my suspicions. She made me fill out like an actual job filing form and even interviewed me by asking me a list of questions via email so it seemed very legit at the time. Being a college student we are always looking for any way to get hired or make money so I didn't think getting paid a $250 for doing one review a month seemed that suspicious at the time, now I know it was too good to be true and I feel so stupid for falling for the scam.

Oh, it was only $250.00? For some reason I thought it was the scam that was over $1,200.00. For $250 and fees, you could make that up pretty quickly with MS'ing. Or get a bartender job. I made really good money bartending throughout college and right after graduation. At the right club/bar, you could make $250 and up in one night.

No it was. I already sent $1,610 via Moneygram and kept $250 for my "commission." Then she sent me another check which I didn't send cause I caught onto the scam. So the most I'm going to have to pay back is $1,860 cause I sent that money already.

Ok. Try the bartending gig then. Good, easy money.

@LukeMann wrote:

Being a college student we are always looking for any way to get hired or make money so I didn't think getting paid a $250 for doing one review a month seemed that suspicious at the time, now I know it was too good to be true and I feel so stupid for falling for the scam.

It sounds as though depositing the check, sending the moneygram, and writing the review probably took less than an hour. $250 for an hour's work sounded reasonable?

You probably should not consider mystery shopping. A single shop like sending a money gram and writing a report usually pays between $10 and $15.

Look I know I was stupid, look at the thousands of people that fall for this type of stuff every year. I'm not trying to justify what I did I'm just trying to figure out where to go from here which you've all helped me out with. It took me a day to even have the funds available and then around 30 minutes to find a working Moneygram then a 20 minute train ride and then getting the money out and sending it took like 30 minutes. People get paid insane amounts of money to do jobs that are even simpler than that, I didn't think it was that crazy at the time.

Here are some clues that the checks are fakes: Are they written from a person or business that is unlikely to send you money (when they did it to me, the check was from a car dealership in New Jersey; I live near St Louis). Second, you MUST search the check for mistakes (mine only had three of the five digits for the zip code). Lastly, do your due diligence and CALL the bank the check is drawn from. When I called the bank and gave them the account number they notified me that that particular account was CLOSED. If you have any way to go to your bank and get a photocopy of the check, do so.

Jay is dead on with this. If you have the second checks money still in your account DO NOT SPEND ANY OF IT. You are going to need to pay that back when these turn out to be forgeries.

Right I agree with you totally. I actually have both the checks, I just mobile deposited them so the bank only has pictures of them. I'm going to call tomorrow to see what more I can do.

P.S. Just so you know, you got the same email as I did with the same exact amount and the same instructions. I never sent the money and they only contacted me once after I sent them back fake results and no money. If they were legit, wouldn't they have kept contacting me or threaten me with legal action? But THEY NEVER DID. Why? Because they are scammers and can't do a damned thing from Nigeria or the Philippines or wherever they are operating out of. They knew I figured their game out.
Imagine how this scam works: You send out 1000 emails a day. Most people will figure it for a scam but maybe 1% don't and follow through. That means 10 people have sent then over $1500 each. That's $15,000.00 freakin' tax free dollars! And like you said, most college students will do most anything to get a little extra spending cash.

I am quitting the MS biz and getting into the SCAM biz. I guess I will have to move to Nigeria though.

Amen to that. They're making crazy money off this stuff. I'm gonna have to start a GoFundMe and work my ass off to get this paid off. Maybe the bank will let me do a repayment plan if I do get in trouble for it.

@Sybil2 wrote:

I am quitting the MS biz and getting into the SCAM biz. I guess I will have to move to Nigeria though.

If I'm doing a scam, I'm doing it from like Sweden or Norway. Cooler weather and no flies! Plus I'd be the only one doing it as opposed to half the country in Nigeria (sorry, don't mean to bad-mouth Nigeria but these scammers give your country a bad name)

Ok, you can have Sweden and I'll take Norway.

Be sure to check local laws and extradition policies.

Sweet! Maybe we can meet up in Aruba during the winter to count all of our ill-gotten gains.

Aruba is a bit too sleepy for me. How about Turks and Caicos?

Yeah, Turks and Caicos it is! I'm partial to Ambergris Cay but anywhere there will do.

LukeMann, you can actually make some modest money doing real mystery shopping and the work is flexible. You could hold down a full time job otherwise and still be able to do some part time work mystery shopping. You can do as much or as little as you're able to do. The thing is, most of the jobs we do don't pay a lot because there are lots of shoppers in most areas and there's competition for the jobs. There is a list of legitimate mystery shopping companies at the bottom of the page. If you want to mystery shop, get busy signing up with them. This is something you can do as a side business for as long as you like.

Most of the shops we do will pay between $10 and $25 per shop. To make any money you will have to do a string of several in a day. As you become more experienced you will become faster and more efficient.

Of course you will have to pay back the bank and I'm hoping they will work something out with you so you can make payments until you get clear of your obligation. Keep us posted on what's going on with you.

Mary Davis Nowell. Based close to Fort Worth. Shopping Interstate 20 east and west, Interstate 35 north and south.

Luke: If you scanned the information from the receiving envelope, Both sides of the check(s) and the names and addresses of those that are to receive the funds, you should send it to IC3.Unfortunately I got into that and found out that the money being sent was going to terrorist cells both in Europe and in the USA. I was lucky enough to have the bank look at the check before I deposited it. When I came home and ran the names of the receivers (both in Europe) I found out about the cells. If you have some way to check the emails most companies don't use g=mail hot mail or live because of the scam problem. Hope this helps.

Oh a follow up note : The ONLY thing a shopper should EVER be asked to pay for outside by a company is your MSPA certs. If a company is charging to get on "The List" report them to MSPA, The BBB and on to IC3.These so called companies will take your money and when you check back will say your still on the list. Most companies will ask that you take company certs before the job or to find jobs for you but they are NOT supposed to charge for them.

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