The letter stated that I was selected to be a secret shopper at sears, wal-mart & western union & I would be paid $325.00 out if the check I received. The check they gave me was for $2,450.71 with the John Deere Logo titled John Deere Insurance Company
They told me to deposit the check & funds would be available in 24-48 hours
The address on the letter is 38th East 29th st. 6th floor, New York, new york & telephone # of 1 866 475-8414 Ext. 1100
Is this a scam or is it legitimate???????
Categorized | Affiliate Marketing 101
I Received A Letter In The Mail From A Company Called Market Survey Inc.?
Posted on March 30, 2011.
Get those mails all the time on my spam folder.
Don’t click on them links, they put virus on them which designed to steal data from your computer without you knowing. If you talk logic, who will give money away for nothing. of course no one would.
It is a SCAM!
The check is fake.
It will bounce about 10-14 days after you have “secret shopped” a Western Union location. This leaves you on the hook for the bad check and possibly even facing criminal charges.
SCAM and you will be arrested if you deposit that check like this woman and thousands of others have found out the hard way http://consumerist.com/2009/07/victim-of…
This is a criminal who either stole or counterfeited checks by John Deere and wants you to launder the money through your personal account – this is a felony offense
An insurance company would have NOTHING to do with a mystery shop at Sears or Walmart. And you are NEVER paid upfront for mystery shopping nor are you told to send money to anyone else. And mystery shops pay $5-10,NOT $325. These scammers are counting on your greed to be more powerful than your common sense — otherwise it would be obvious this was a scam from the beginning
There is no John Deere Insurance Company. The only insurance offfered by John Deere is Crop Insurance offered through John Deere Risk Protection Inc which insures farmers’ crops – they don’t send money to random people and tell them to spend it on mystery shopshttps://secured.deere.com/en_US/crop_ins… – call the main number and speak to their accounting department. I’m sure they would like to know that a scammer is counterfeiting their logo and checks so they can get their own legal team involved
Funds will not be available – they will look like they are available then 3 weeks later when the check bounces you not only owe your bank$2450.71 but your account will be closed, you will be investigated by the police, and you will be put into CHEX system preventing you from opening a bank account or credit card or taking out any sort of loan for 5 years
Contact your local FBI Field Office http://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field/fiel… and report that you have been recruited as a money mule. They will advise if you should forward the check and all correspondence to them or just shred it and ignore any future communication from these criminals
100% scam.
There is no mystery shopper job.
There is only a scammer trying to steal your hard-earned money.
The next email was from another of the scammer’s fake names and free email addresses pretending to be the “secretary/assistant/accountant” and has demanded you cash a large fake check sent on a stolen UPS/FedEx billing account number and send most of the “money” via Western Union or moneygram back to the scammer posing as the “trainer” while you “keep” a small portion. When your bank realizes the check is fake and it bounces, you get the real life job of paying back the bank for the bounced check fees and all the bank’s money you sent to an overseas criminal.
Western Union and moneygram do not verify anything on the form the sender fills out, not the name, not the street address, not the country, not even the gender of the receiver, it all means absolutely nothing. The clerk will not bother to check ID and will simply hand off your cash to whomever walks in the door with the MTCN# and question/answer. Neither company will tell the sender who picked up the cash, at what store location or even in what country your money walked out the door. Neither company has any kind of refund policy, money sent is money gone forever.
When you refuse to send him your cash he will send increasingly nasty and rude emails trying to convince you to go through with his scam. The scammer could also create another fake name and email address like “FBI@ gmail.com”, “police_person @hotmail.com” or “investigator @yahoo.com” and send emails telling you the job is legit and you must cash the fake check and send your money to the scammer or you will face legal action. Just ignore, delete and block those email addresses. Although, reading a scammer’s attempt at impersonating a law enforcement offical can be extremely funny.
Now that you have responded to a scammer, you are on his ‘potential sucker’ list, he will try again to separate you from your cash. He will send you more emails from his other free email addresses using another of his fake names with all kinds of stories of great jobs, lottery winnings, millions in the bank and desperate, lonely, sexy singles. He will sell your email address to all his scamming buddies who will also send you dozens of fake emails all with the exact same goal, you sending them your cash via Western Union or moneygram.
You could post up the email address and the emails themselves that the scammer is using, it will help make your post more googlable for other suspicious potential victims to find when looking for information.
Do you know how to check the header of a received email? If not, you could google for information. Being able to read the header to determine the geographic location an email originated from will help you weed out the most obvious scams and scammers. Then delete and block that scammer. Don’t bother to tell him that you know he is a scammer, it isn’t worth your effort. He has one job in life, convincing victims to send him their hard-earned cash.
Whenever suspicious or just plain curious, google everything, website addresses, names used, companies mentioned, phone numbers given, all email addresses, even sentences from the emails as you might be unpleasantly surprised at what you find already posted online. You can also post/ask here and every scam-warner-anti-fraud-busting site you can find before taking a chance and losing money to a scammer.
6 “Rules to follow” to avoid most fake jobs:
1) Job asks you to use your personal bank account and/or open a new one.
2) Job asks you to print/mail/cash a check or money order.
3) Job asks you to use Western Union or moneygram in any capacity.
4) Job asks you to accept packages and re-ship them on to anyone.
5) Job asks you to pay visas, travel fees via Western Union or moneygram.
6) Job asks you to sign up for a credit reporting or identity verification site.
Avoiding all jobs that mention any of the above listed ‘red flags’ and you will miss nearly all fake jobs. Only scammers ask you to do any of the above. No. Exceptions. Ever. For any reason.
If you google “fake check cashing job”, “fraud Western Union scam”, “money mule moneygram scam” or something similar you will find hundreds of posts from victims and near-victims of this type of scam