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Secret Shopper scams are completely different from legitimate Secret Shopper jobs. A legitimate Secret Shopper employer pays qualified individuals to rate restaurants and retail stores. In other words, you are paid to dine out and go shopping. A Secret Shopper is never, ever asked to test a money wiring service.

How the scam works

Secret Shopper scams have two goals: to persuade the victim to wire stolen money and to obtain the victim's personal information - ID Theft.

A Secret Shopper scam always involves receiving a check or money orders. It always involves cashing the drafts or depositing them in your checking account, then wiring the money by MoneyGram or occasionally Western Union to a stranger. Many victims are told to go to Walmart to wire the money.

The scammers don't want their victims to be warned off by the money wiring service so they instruct the victim to say they the money is being sent to a relative.
The victim has now become involved in money laundering.
Just about every Secret Shopper victim who comes to us states that the check or money order looked genuine, even to the bank or check cashing store. Well that's because the check stock is genuine.

The drafts are written on stolen stock or on paper that has been reproduced by a professional counterfeiter on a printing press using the same methods as check printing companies use. With the right software and ink for the micro encoding at the bottom of the draft, drafts can be reproduced on a home printer.
Sometimes the drafts have been washed, meaning the original Payee and amount was chemically removed.

One trick the scammers use is to send out counterfeit drafts on which the routing number, account number, and bank name do not match. This means the draft has to go through special handling, causing a delay in the return of the check. The delay gives the scammers time to send the victim more checks before the scam is discovered.

How to really verify checks and money orders

The average person does not view and touch very many different drafts. They have their own checks, receive a paycheck unless they are on auto-deposit, occasionally get a rebate check or refund from a store, may send off money orders from time to time, and at least once a year receive a Treasury check. That is far too few to be a good judge of whether a check is genuine or not.
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W ARNING: DO NOT DEPOSIT A CHECK TO SEE IF IT IS GOOD, EVEN IF YOUR BANK TELLS

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