Nigerian Price / Mystery shopper Scam for the modern age

September 29, 2014 8:50 AM

Recently I got involved with mystery shopper type . They sent over email to which i replied my home address. When I got the check for the mystery shopped payment and deposited , BOA flagged the payment as a fraud and put it on hold. After that I put the email on my spam and reported phishing in gmail.

My question then is is there anywhere I can report the details of this spam (DOJ or other group) and does anybody else have similar experience. I have pictures of the letter, emails and the check that was sent to me using usps.

posted by radsqd to Law & Government (5 answers total)

Mod note: Removed personal info. This absolutely cannot become a doxxing thread. Discussing strategies is fine, posting results isn't.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 8:59 AM on September 29, 2014

My favorite resource for this type of situation is StopFraud.gov. It's a government website that will direct you to the appropriate federal agency where you can make a report.
posted by insectosaurus at 9:20 AM on September 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

This is pretty much a classic mystery shopping scam, and you'll see information all over the web about it. I've done a fair bit of mystery shopping in my life, and the way it works is you either pay out of pocket for something (meal, trinket, service, etc.) and then file a report with your receipt and they repay you, or you evaluate someone/something and then file a report with pictures or some other proof and then they pay you. Legit mystery shop companies do not mail you checks and ask you to deposit them. It's basically scamming 101 and unfortunately you fell for it.
posted by jabes at 9:21 AM on September 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

As folks have posted here in the past, the FBI isn't interested in dollar amounts even up to five figures -- there's just too much activity out there. Local police may open an investigation, but very often the perpetrators are out of the reach of your law enforcement.

I'm not sure what else you can do at this point except count yourself lucky that the bank stopped the deposit from even occurring (victims who spend the money often find themselves completely screwed over). There are websites such as 419eater [in the past the Nigerian criminal code for advance fee fraud was section 419] that specialize in trying to turn the tables on the scammers, so that's one potential option to pursue.
posted by dhartung at 11:54 PM on September 29, 2014

friend of mine is an FBI agent, and I do eComm with international exposure. There is nothing to be done from an enforcement perspective because of jurisdiction problems. Only if a major organized scam got going would anyone gear up, and the reason all these scams originate from a few known high-fraud countries is because of lax enforcement on their end.

INTERPOL is, sad to say, not the international MI-5 type organization it's portrayed as in movies. It's basically an agency that serves as an information clearinghouse. I doubt they would even come raid your house if you illegally copied a movie.
posted by randomkeystrike at 5:32 AM on September 30, 2014