Is this check fradulent?
So I received a letter in the mail just now from Pinnacle Market Research 11645 South Street, Bronx, NY 10451 stating that they are looking for mystery shoppers. They want you to spend the enclosed $3,565.00 cashier’s check from PNC Bank on the following assignments. A $3,100 western Union transfer to someone in China, $300 is your pay for participating, $65 to cover the transfer fee and $100 to spend at J C Penny, K-Mart, Toysrus, Dillard’s etc. on anything you want. Has anyone come across a letter like this. Would you cash the check and follow the assignments?
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13 Answers
Yeah and if you buy that, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’ll sell you at a cheap price. Of course it’s bogus.
I will give you one guess about it being fradulent and it rhymes with guess.
I would imagine if you were to cash the check and wire the funds overseas you might find you broken some sort of law which is why someone is willing to send it in the post at random for someone else to do.
It’s bogus. The tip-off is the Western Union wire transfer out of the country. When the check is exposed as fraudulent, the transfer will have already been made… under your name. You’ll be required to make good on it, because it won’t be cancelled in time and will already be cashed at the other end.
If you had any thought at all that the check was good then you could deposit it in your own account, wait for it to clear (a few days at most) and be properly credited to your “funds available”, and then do whatever you thought was right with the funds.
Ask yourself why someone would send you a check for far more than required and ask you to make a wire transfer to an unrelated party. That makes no sense. The whole thing is a scam.
A girl I worked with fell for this scheme. The cashier’s check is a forgery or stolen. When you deposit it into your account and then withdraw the funds for the wire transfer, they are counting on your bank taking some time to discover the fraud. In this girl’s case it was a Postal Money Order and it was several weeks before her bank came back to her, ready to prosecute for passing a forged document. This was after the bank had “cleared” it and made the funds available in her account. She ended up responsible for paying back the full amount plus penalties to her bank and of course, the recipient of the wire transfer was never found.
@Blueroses – wow, I’ve never heard of anyone actually falling for one of these! I guess it does happen.
@dappled_leaves She wasn’t even the only one at that bank to fall for it. The scam’s been around for a long time so it must have a pretty decent success rate. She ended up having to take out a personal loan with the bank, using her paid-off vehicle as collateral and the “free” $400 cost her over $5000 by the time she paid interest on that loan. An expensive lesson. This particularly detestable scheme preys on the vulnerability of people who are already poor.
Why send anything associated with this scam, out of the country? This is the red flag that you should have noticed, at the very first.
The bottom line is: you never get something for nothing.
Of course it is a scam. Burn it or shred it be thankful you asked the good people on Fluther.
They are an old saying that I just love. If it’s to good to be true, it probably is. Be cautious folks. Im not an educated person but I have enough brains to know fraud when I see it..
Actually this is the second letter I received and the last one had someone else listed in the United States to transfer the money to. I know I could depend on you guys to expose this.
That’s why I like Fluther. Fluther tentacles UNITE!!!!
If you have any doubt check for things like this. I’m glad you came to the jellies and didn’t get caught in the scam.
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