Greg's Corner

Scammers send fake check to police department

By Greg Collier

When we came across this story, not only did we find it amusing, but it also shows a key part of most scams.

A police captain in Appleton, Wisconsin, received a strange piece of mail at his office. It was a priority envelope that contained a letter and a check. The letter offered its recipient a position as a mystery shopper. The mystery shopper or secret shopper scam is one that’s been around a long time. It even predates the internet but has adapted well to the online world.

For those who may not know, many of the bigger chain stores employ mystery shoppers. These are store employees who go around to each store posing as a customer. Their job is to rate the store’s performance through things like appearance, customer service, and selection. However, the job isn’t as commonplace as the scammers would have you believe.

In the mystery shopper scam, scammers send their victims a fake or stolen check. The victim is told to deposit the check in their bank account and use the funds to purchase store gift cards. Big box stores like Walmart and Target often have their names used in this scam. Once the victim buys the gift cards, they’re supposed to give the gift card numbers to the scammer, who tells the victim to keep some of the money from the check as payment.

By the time the victim’s bank realizes the check is fake, the scammer has already made off with the gift cards, leaving the victim responsible for the amount of the fake check to their bank.

So, did scammers intentionally try to recruit a police captain? Probably not. Scammers like to cast as wide a net as possible. The scammers most likely bought a bunch of mailing lists, and sent fake checks to as many people as possible. Most modern scams can be profitable to scammers if they only get a handful of victims to take the bait out of the thousands they try to fool.

As far as this particular scam goes, real companies are not just going to send out checks to random people telling them they now have a job with them. And any job that asks you to deposit a check into your personal bank account to use for business purposes is a scammer.