The $3000 check you should never cash

Hey, my momma responded!!! Hey Mom! Everyone wave at my mom--she's the one over there who looks an awful lot like me!!! :-D She used to go to parent-teacher conferences and the teachers would come up to her, "Oh, you must be Havilah's mom!" even though they had never even met her before. We just look that much alike. :-)

Okay, enough waving at the mom, I've got a serious rant coming on. I belong to the WAHM forum (WAHM = Work-at-Home Mom) and it seems like every day, people are posting "leads" and asking if this is a genuine job. This is a "lead" that was posted last night:

"I Received a letter in the mail today with a check for over $3000.00 from Secret Shoppers. I am suppose to go to Walmart and send a MoneyGram for the amt of $2945.00 and the serv. chrg of 75.00. And I will be pd 200 for training.

"I have 48 hours to do this. Today is Friday , with a check that is over two thousand dollars it takes a few days to clear. Has anyone done this before? I have been called twice to check if I rec. the info. from someone from the company. She even gave me a suprevisor name and number."

Wow. My jaw dropped when I read this. This jobs SCREAMS scam to me. There are so many things wrong with this, I don't even know where to start.

First of all, I am assuming that since this was a job for a company called "Secret Shoppers," I have to assume that you are supposed to do this job so you can evaluate the way that the Wal-Mart employees interacted with you. I have been looking at getting into mystery shopping, and let me tell you, there isn't a chance on this green earth that any legitimate MS company was going to pay you this kind of money ($200) to do a shop that would take all of 10 minutes. Strike number one.

Strike number two: MS companies have contracted to do a shop for a company (in this case, it would be Wal-Mart.) They have to make sure that they have shoppers that can cover the shop. They would not blindly send out checks to people, hoping that these people can do the shops by the deadline. If this really was a legitimate check for $3000 (which it most assuredly is not) then why would they take the chance that you will actually be home to do the shop?? It's the middle of summer. You could be gone for two weeks on vacation. They wouldn't send the check, THEN call you to make sure you could do the shop. That simply doesn't make any sense at all.

Strike number three: $2045 + $75 does not equal $3000. If the company cannot do even simple math like that, then they obviously have something wrong with them. I don't do well with math, and I can see that there's a problem there, sans a calculator. That really says something.

Strike number four: If the company really was going to pay you $200 to do a 10 minute shop (bwaahhhahahaha!!!!) then why wouldn't they just send you a check for $200 and tell you to cash that? Why go through this whole elaborate shenanigan?

Why? Because this is a scam. Scams rely on one thing every time: People making hasty decisions. You get this check. It is staring you in the face. $3000 right there. An extremely easy way to make $200. Do it! Do it! Phone calls from people, "Are you going to do this? Here is my sup's number. Call! We're legit! We need to know if you're going to do this! Tell us your decision!" A legitimate company would not need to pressure you like that.

No decision should ever be made hastily when it comes to $3000. The need for haste, the need for pressure, comes because the company knows that if you sit down and think about what is going on, think this through logically, then you are going to see all of the problems associated with this "job" and go running in the other direction. They don't want to give you that chance to think. As I told my hubby last night, there is a better chance of aliens landing in our front yard, a tornado hitting our backyard, lightning hitting our house and an earthquake hitting our truck, simultaneously! than this being an actual job.

There is a happy ending. I posted my thoughts, and the original poster responded:

Thank you all for your help and comments. I plan on taking this check to the bank that it is endorsed from and take to my local police dept. this is so sad and unfortunately how many people have they hurt. We are all looking for legit jobs to feed our families and its companies and people like this that make us suffer the most. Thanks to having caring people such as you all to look out for one another.

THANKS SOOOOOOOOO MUCH...

At least this is one work-at-home mom who won't be taken for a ride. The next time you think you might be on the receiving end of a scam, stop, put the check out of sight, turn off your phone, and just THINK. Think it through logically. Scams don't stand up against the Think Test. It is my theory that there are 17 people in this world who have come up with all of these scams, and they are just perpetuating them all over the internet. There are thousands of scams out there, so you would think that there are thousands of scammers, but I really think there are only 17. I originally said 2, but Doug negotiated me up to 17. Don't make those 17 people's lives any easier.

Here's to ridding the world of those 17 and going back to living in peace and prosperity!

Havs