Complaint Review: The Survey Team - Internet

BEWARE! - Survey/Secret Shopper Scam!

I was almost duped by a job posting I found on CareerBuilder. I had just recently moved across the country and was having a hard time trying to find a job. So continually looking in the paper, and online, I'd see quite a few "work at home" adds. One was for performing surveys and stating that you'd receive $300 per survey and to just send your name, address, phone # and email to get started.

Since it didn't show any intro costs I was interested and emailed the address in the paper to this "Martha Hay". The next day I received a response. The email stated that I had been accepted as a "Mystery Shopper/Survey Agent" and that I would be evaluating Walmart stores and Western Union services.

It stated that to perform the survey I would need to write a report with 7 key points and email the results back:

1) How long it took you to get services. 2) Ambiance/Outlook of the Shop/Outlet 3) Smartness of the attendant 4) Customer service professionalism 5) Reaction of personnel under pressure 6) Information that you think would be helpful 7) Your comments and impressions.

*CLUE #1: The first email I received was not a regular email. It was in bold text, with many punctuation, grammatical and spelling errors. It was also repeated 3 times.

Since the email was not clear as to what to do or buy at these stores or whether I needed to actually buy ANYTHING, I emailed "Martha" back with questions.

In the mean time I actually needed to go shopping and went to a Walmart and took mental notes to prepare my survey. However I did not want to write a report until I had heard back.

Within the next 2 days I received an anonymous FedEx Express package. I opened it and all that it contained was a check for $2,600.00 from the "Navy Federal Credit Union". I was shocked! I had no affiliation with this bank, was not expecting money from anyone or any place and my name was hand written as well as misspelled on the check. At the time I had no idea that this check had anything to do with the store survey program I had signed up for. There was nothing to indicate how or why the check had come.

*CLUE #2: Strange things appear in the mail.

I looked at the AirBill on the package and could not make out everything that was written. What I did make out was that it was from "A. ____" something I could not make out. The company name listed was "AIP INC." The address listed was 575 -what looked like- Pleasant (or Prasant) Valley Way, West Orange, NJ 07052.

Now of course I had no idea who this was, there was no phone # or any contact info at all to call to see if they had sent this to the wrong person or why I had received an anonymous check. So, I tried Googling the address and the zip code. The zip verified that it was from West Orange NJ, and the address located a 575 Pleasant Valley Way in that zip code area. However this still did not shed any light on the situation as the address was not related to any company or organization at all.

So running into a dead end there, I decided to call the bank. However there was no phone # listed on the check.

*CLUE #3: LOOK at the check, there were MANY things that would show it was a fake.

The check however did list a Website. So from that Website I called the bank organization and verified with the CSR that the routing # was wrong, the account # listed did not exist and that there was not enough information on the check to make it real. I thanked her for her time and put the check away thinking that it was just some random scam to try and gain access to my account somehow (I still didn't have any reason to think that it was related to the survey scam since they never stated they would be sending me any $ at all, and if they had that would be a BIG red flag right away anyway)

So still being confused as to the check situation I looked a little more closely and found a multitude of mistakes: On the center stamp where the contact info for the bank is listed, there is a PO box for an address. The city, state and zip code were typed as follows: "Merrifield Va22119. 30000". As you can see VA is wrong, there is also no comma between the city and state and there are spacing issues with the state, and zip code. The check also does not list a phone # but only an address the reads as follows: "navyfcu.org". Now, this is a legitimate Website. However, the type most likely should have had the www in front of it to make it more precise.

Also, I turned over the check and saw that the back printing was not only crooked but had other errors as well.

On the top the print read: "A stop payment can only be processed if this chech is lost, stolen, or destroyed" - And as you can see chech is not a word.

And under the endorsement line it says "Endorsed here" instead of Endorse Here. On the bottom of the check it also states "Original Check is printed on chemical Reactive paper and has an artificial watermark on this side hold to light to verify Watermarked paper". Now I didn't do fantastic in English class, but even I can see the punctuation and grammatical errors in that sentence. It's ridiculous. There's also NO watermark!

So now that I was thoroughly pissed that someone would try to fraud me a check I reported them to the US Treasury for fraud (but it was late on a Friday and I had to leave a message and did not get a call back right away)

In the mean time, the next day, I received an email back from "Martha Hay" she stated that she had FedExed me a package with a check (she gave me the tracking # which matched my mystery package from the day before) and that I was to deposit the check (although she called it a money order, which it is not, but it's not a check either) right away and then I was to keep $370 out of the $2,600 and extract the rest to then send the money by Western Union to "Carol Wealth" in Madrid, Spain.

CLUE #4: Creepy requests to send money to an out of the country person.

This email was also FULL of punctuation, grammatical and spelling errors (to which just may be because the person typing them is stupid, or whose English is a second language).

FINALLY I was able to put the 2 together to see that the whole situation was a scam requesting me to try and commit a crime by assisting in the cashing of a fraudulent check!

A long story, I know, but please BE CAREFUL and pay attention to every detail and keep copies of every email, correspondence, letter or mail posting you receive if you try to sign up for a "work from home" or "surveys online" posting!!