We've been made aware of job scams that involve mystery shoppers or secret shopping programs.  The scam involves con artists who advertise these jobs and then "hire" indviduals online who eventually become victims.  This is a very crafty deception that takes advantage of eager job seekers and often can take advantage of the good will of companies as well.

Here is what they are doing...

1. They advertise for mystery shoppers.
2. After a series of online interviews, they "hire" the victim.
3. They send the victim a check for $1000 or more to cash at the victim's bank.
4. They then "train" and instruct the victim to go to a money wiring service such as Western Union or another and to wire $700 or $800 to an out-of-country entity and then to fill in a survey on the service they received.
5. After the money has been wired out of the country, the original $1000 check bounces making the victim liable to their own bank for the balance that was wired away.
6. Of course the "Company representative" is now unable to be found, having moved on to new email addresses and contact info.

It is very important for the legitimate hiring and HR community to be aware of this scam and to help publicize it.  The good will of legitimate companies is also being ruined because, often, these con artists will say they are from a division of a legitimate company to gain credibility.

We have written further on this topic on our website at Jobs.US.COM. We are also checking job listings going forward to try to reduce the occurance of these scams.

All job lisitng or job classified web sites and large HR divisions should post this information to warn the many potential job-seeking victims out there.  This is a growing problem and is claiming more victims every day due to ignorance and desperation.