Scam targets people willing to be ‘mystery shoppers’

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This article was published 20/08/2015 (4006 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Did that $4,580.50 cheque you got in the mail from the OnField company recruiting you to be a mystery shopper seem too good to be true?

It’s a scam, Better Business Bureau watchdogs in Winnipeg, Halifax and Houston warn.

“We had an investigation here that was very similar. People lost $1,500 to $3,000,” Manitoba BBB president and CEO Len Andrusiak said. “There is no listing of OnField as a business anywhere in Canada and the U.S.”

While OnField lists a business office address in Moncton, N.B. — a bank is on that site — there is no record for the company, said Jody McArthur, a BBB investigator in Halifax. “We’ve been dealing with other secret shopper scams lately.”

OnField is not a tenant at the Moncton office building address listed on the cheque, said property manager Debbie McGrath: “They don’t exist here.”

OnField sent the cheque and recruiting letter to a Winnipeg home, the envelope bearing a return address of a Mississauga post office box.

The letter included the company logos for McDonald’s, Safeway, Walmart and Shoppers Drug Mart, and explained the recipient was being offered well-paying work to be a secret shopper at major chain stores. OnField would activate the cheque once the recipient had taken certain unspecified actions.

OnField listed its office locations in Juarez, Mexico; Houston, Texas; London, U.K.; and a fourth-floor suite on Yonge Street in Toronto. The Toronto address is a now-vacant former automobile dealership.

Recipients were instructed to call assignment co-ordinator Michael Beasley at a Toronto number.

Beasley answered the phone Tuesday, but hung up as soon as a caller identified himself as a reporter.

“These are very concerning. We want to act on them as quickly as possible,” said Alex Robertson from Walmart’s Canadian headquarters in Mississauga.

Walmart’s website addresses mystery shoppers scams on its website. It lays out how people get scammed out of thousands of dollars when they transfer money as directed and they’re left with the original worthless cheque.

“It’ll bounce a few days later,” said Safeway official Betty Kellsey from Calgary. “We’ve had a number of issues with ‘grandparent’ schemes, ‘sweepstakes’ schemes. This is the first one like this we’re aware of,” Kellsey said. “We alert the stores to be on the watch for similar frauds and schemes.”

Houston BBB official Leah Napoliello said her office has not checked out OnField’s alleged local office, but has no record of the company’s existence.

OnField also claimed to be a member of the Mystery Shopping Providers Association, a global organization of more than 400 legitimate mystery shopping companies.

Not so, MSPA North American president Rich Bradley said from Orlando, Fla.

“They are not a member of any MSPA chapter,” said Bradley. “Unfortunately, scammers just steal logos, names of legitimate corporate executives and our association logo, and try to steal money from unsuspecting consumers.

“Mystery shopping is a legitimate, multibillion-dollar worldwide industry whose roots started here in the U.S. in the 1940s,” Bradley said.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca