Complaint Review: Joint Commission International Consumer Research

I received a letter from Consumer Research out of suppose to be New York, New York with a business check of 2,890.00. They said that on previous surveys I had indicated that I was interested in having additional income from a part time job and that I had been selected to participate in a paid Consumer Research Program in my area of residence as a Mystery Shopper. I would have two trial assignments, first to pose as a potential shopper at wal-mart,sears,jcpennys,homedepot,or officedepot with 130.00 included with check, and second to transfer 2,340.01 of the funds. I called the number and talked with my so-called accounts manager Linda Powell she told me to deposit the money in my account and wait until the funds were available and call her back. 3 days later when the funds were available I called her back and she asked where I was gonna shop with the 130.00. I told her wal-marts and the city it was in and she told me that there was a moneygram in that store so I could wire the money there also. they even paid the service fees.I was paid 300.00 for doing this and was told by her that I would be paid 600.00 a week for the first 3 months and 800.00 after that. the check was from a sovereign bank out of Pa. with watermarks and other security markings. I thought my bank had held the check until it cleared but the teller thought the check looked legit and put it straight in my account. this is ridiculous and the government should do somthing about scams like this,also the banks should legally have to put holds on any type of consumer research checks until they know that their ligitimate, I reported this to FTC and the FBI, but they said they almost never find these frauds and no one ever gets their money back. Websites like this are nice but alot of people don't even know that they exist until they are scammed! Maybe theres a way that this website could become more public so more people would be alerted before it happens to them.

Karen
Carrabelle, Florida
U.S.A.