Does anyone know about LinkShare as a mystery shop? They sent email to me asking that I accept money and then conduct a hidden survey at my nearest Money Gram Outlet. The job pays $150.00!! Sounds like a scam. If anyone can help me out I would appreciate it

Essentially, ANY email you get about money transfer shops is a SCAM!

This sounds very much like a scam. You will not get an advance check for a real money transfer shops and the pay would never be that good.

Good signs that it is a scam:

1) They found you rather than you initiating the contact by signing up with them
2) They pay an amount that seems generous for the work and time involved
3) They are asking you to receive money in advance of your work

As soon as they say they are paying $150 and it doesn't take more than a full day of work on your part, you should have your answer to the question. The #1-3 above are just additional hints.

The scam works by sending you a legitimate looking check, usually a forgery with the name of an actual mystery shopping company or close enough that if/when you look them up on the internet you are likely to find a same or similarly named legitimate company.

The bank account number on the check is likely to be real, so if the bank calls ahead, there is enough money in the account to cover the check.

The check will be bounced as a forgery either by the paying bank or by the real owner of the account.

Let me suggest for a moment that you send a Christmas check for $5 to your nephew Johnny. Lets say that I am a thief who steals the mail from Johnny's mailbox. I go to my computer and I can print perfectly legitimate checks, but I print your account number from the check you wrote Johnny. I 'issue' checks out using your account number for $276 and sign them "Mickey Mouse" in an appropriate scribbly hand. The chances are good that one or more of these checks will 'clear' against your account balance, but when you complain or your bank bothers to check the signatures, they will bounce the check back through the system and the money will be duly deducted from the account of the person who deposited the check. This process is likely to take several weeks, and assuming that the person who deposited the check waited their 7-10 for the check to be marked 'cleared' by their bank and ran off and spent the money, the bank will be calling them to make up the missing funds. They will also be charging fees for the service of recovering their lost funds.

And if it is a certain bank the cavers know, it could take even longer. LOL.

It's a scam.

Doug
NWLPC
www.nwlpc.com

It is a scam for sure. Any company that pays you an exceptionally large amount of money prior to doing a job would be some sort of scam. You have to be really careful.

It is really sad that there are so many scams going on.

I am trying to help my daughter find a job. You apply for the job on Craig's List (not mystery shopping), click on a link and they ask you to apply for a credit report. They say, you will use the cash register and they have to be assured that you have good credit. I could not believe this.This happened many times.

Do to the lack of jobs out there, people are taking advantage with all kinds of scams.

Yes, Craig's List is rife with scammers of all ilks. It is sad because it started out as such a cool resource. Many of the 'jobs' also redirect you to signups for diploma mills suggesting that an 'degree, quickly and at your convenience' will make you eligible for lots of jobs. Just one more useless 'credentials' scam.

Definite Scam! I have a friend that knows I do mystery shopping full-time and instead of asking me how to get stated she went ahead and paid for the mystery shopping program. Her first 3 offers were for transferring money and it was from 3 different companies! PLEASE if it sounds too good to be true, research the heck out of it before you decide to take it!

Flash now that you mention it, one of the ads did mention furthering your education.

This scam comes in many other forms other than those discussed here. It is known as "check kiting". Another common scam is the email offer of a "job" in some company's "Accounting/ Finance Dept" or "Accts Receivables Dept" with a common title of some form of Manager or Finance Manager.

They offer a percentage of the payments received by you... usually about 10% or a guaranteed salary to accept payments.

The entire idea is to get you to deposit sizable checks into your account and to then forward most of that stolen money back to them.

One company sent me a check for $ 4,800.00. I called the company that was listed on the check and made them aware of the issue. Their response was "Not again?"