I received a plain envelope in the mail with no return address, no post date and merely my address and a Canadian stamp on it. I thought it was a personal letter until I opened it and discovered it was an offer for a mystery shopper job. They included an ENCLOSED check for $4315 telling me to go to Western Union and send one of four people $3720, to pay $200 for an "estimated" fee at Western Union and then go shopping with a remaining $95 at one of many stores including Walmart, JcPenney and Target. The last $300 was supposedly my first payment.

I immediately got online and did a search for this company and found that they had no website and no previous information online except for a couple of address listings. They claimed to be a member of the Better Business Bureau but I can find no information about them on the BBB website. I then looked for mystery shopper scams and found right off that this is a common practice and that the check is indeed counterfeit and will bounce, leaving me to cover the insufficient funds that the bank will later discover.