TOLEDO, Ohio — Your day starts out like this: you get a check in the mail for $2,400. A company wants you to be a secret shopper; buying gifts cards and rating your experience.
"They tell you to deposit the check in the bank, and then tomorrow when the bank credits your account, take out $2,000, buy gift cards at various stores. Walmart, Kohl's or wherever they can tell you," Dick Eppstein, president of the Better Business Bureau of Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan, said.
After buying thousands of dollars in gift cards, the company wants you to send them the card numbers. The problem is, the check used to buy the cards is counterfeit.
"As soon as you give them the gift card numbers, they can spend those gift cards any way they want," Eppstein said.
And you find yourself on the hook for $2,400 you never had.
Eppstein says if an opportunity sounds too good to be true, it probably is. He says legitimate secret shopper programs put people through a hiring process before giving them money.
"It's not just 'you're hired and you start tomorrow,' so you know it's a scam," he said.
WTOL 11 found a certain secret shopper scam.
Using the number they gave us to send the gift card information, we decided to give the scammers a taste of their own medicine, sending pictures of fake gift cards. Eventually, the scammers stopped responding to our messages.
Unfortunately, some people fall prey to these kinds of scams - and police getting your money back is next to impossible.
"Can they get your money back? It's doubtful. I think once you've fallen for this scam and bought those gift cards and given the numbers to these crooks, your money may be gone," Eppstein said.
Epstein says if you receive a big check to be a secret shopper, you can simply shred it. You can also report it to the FBI, or the BBB scam tracker online.